


We Were Here

by 720418mb



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Civil War Fix-It, F/M, Fix-It, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Stony - Freeform, Tony Stark Has A Heart, being in love makes Clint grumpy, but godDAMN is he in love, hawksilver - Freeform, kiss and make up, steve and tony finally stop fighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:02:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 43,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6944587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/720418mb/pseuds/720418mb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If they could have seen the future, if they could have known everything that was going to happen, if they could have stopped their fighting and worked together, things would turn out better.</p><p>...wouldn't they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upon further reflection, I have decided that this chapter is not exactly "vital" to the plot line of the story. If you WANT to read about the background of my OC, then feel free, but if you'd rather move on to the part with the actual Avengers in it, you can skip this chapter or even just read it out of order if you ever feel like it!
> 
> Just so no one gets disinterested with the focus on the OC, I wanted to make sure I shared that.

Baltimore is just one city. Small in the grand scheme of things, really. Its population of 622,000 barely held a candle to New York City’s 8.406 million people. It had tacky street performers, a harbor that smelled more like a hazardous waste zone, and about a dozen seafood restaurants whose crab legs were mostly likely the cause of death in multiple homicide cases. But despite all of these things, to some people, Baltimore was home. And as such, they made it their job to protect it.

“Damnit Carlos, I told you he was coming up on your left! YOUR LEFT! Jesus Christ, you’re gonna give me an ulcer, you jackass.”

Madison Matthews slowly opens her eyes and lets her conscious come back to the present as she sees Carlos landing the final blow on the thug he had chased down. She tugs her hood further down over her eyes and steps out from the alleyway she had been hiding in as she slowly starts making her way around the corner to where Carlos would meet her. He still had to run back and return the purse he recovered from the thug to its rightful owner, so she strolls slowly, probably more calm than any young woman had a right to be when walking the backstreets of Baltimore at night.

But such was a normal occurrence for her, given the “part-time job” that she and her best friend Carlos had taken up over the past several years. Baltimore was a hot-bed of crime and gang activity, but real estate was cheap, drawing in and dragging down many young adults desperate to get away from home, even if it meant crawling back on their hands and knees. That’s exactly what a city like this did to floundering young people. Madison and Carlos took it upon themselves to protect their kindred souls.

You see, three years ago, it wasn’t just Madison and Carlos; it was Madison, Carlos, Mikey and Julia. The latter two had just gotten engaged and the four friends, along with some other acquaintances were at a bar celebrating the good news. Madison still liked to close her eyes sometimes and picture scenes from that night, at that bar. She liked to remember Julia’s arms wound tightly around her as her lips stretched into an impossibly wide smile and her almond-shaped eyes shone like sunlight. Madison remembered laughing so hard she struggled to stand upright, hers and Julia’s shoulders knocking against each other while Mikey looked on fondly from across the room and Carlos challenged him to another drinking game.

Madison also remembered the blood. She couldn’t picture the night without it. No matter how hard she tried, her train of thought would always go from a steady pace as she remembered the beginning of the night and slowly start speeding up, faster and faster, as memories flashed behind her eyelids and finally went crashing into the darkness, without her having any control over her thoughts.

It always ended with the blood.

Julia’s engagement ring was gorgeous. Big, but understated, and dripping with diamonds (which Mikey could only afford with a loan from his ridiculously loaded parents). It drew the eye of every person in the room…

And every criminal on the street.

After the celebration, Carlos had been walking Madison home, leaving Mikey and Julia to enjoy the rest of their night by themselves. The pair had barely made it around the corner from the bar when it happened.

Madison remembers the sounds of the struggle, the thumping and groaning and screaming. She remembers the pounding of her heart in her ears as she recognizes the panicked sound of Julia’s voice and Mikey’s angry shouting and she and Carlos take off back towards the bar. She remembers the piercing sound of a gunshot. Once. Twice. She remembers falling over Julia’s body as the blood pooled beneath her head and sobbing wretchedly as her best friend’s life slipped away.

But more than anything, she remembers how she saw the entire scene play out in her head exactly the way it happened, five minutes before it actually happened.

Carlos had told her she was crazy for weeks when she confided in him, but she didn’t begrudge him for not believing her. He was in shock and mourning, same as her. But he didn’t have the same heavy guilt settling in the bottom of his stomach that _I could have done something. I could have stopped it._

She predicted the winning lottery numbers for the next month straight to prove it to him (without actually entering, because that would just be a gross abuse of her newfound power).

And the rest, as they say, was history. The pair made it their new mission to keep the streets of Baltimore safe, to avenge the memory of their best friends. Madison saw where the crimes were going to be, and Carlos waited for the action with guns blazing (usually only a baseball bat, actually). Madison hid a safe distance away and communicated with Carlos through ear piece, telling him every move his opponent(s) were going to make before they made them, making it essentially impossible for Carlos to lose a fight.

Well, impossible as long as he listened to what Madison said…

“Do you actually know your left from your right, or have you just been guessing and getting lucky all along?” Madison accuses as she approaches the figure waiting for her under the light of the streetlamp.

Carlos laughs and tugs off his hood and then his baseball hat, fingers running through his wavy black hair.

“Nothing gets past you, does it?”

“Remind me never to get in a car with you.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, pretty sure I won’t be able to afford a car within the next century if I keep working for Hammerstein.” Madison laughs and the two begin their nightly trek to Madison’s apartment, conveniently located just down the street from Carlos’. They talk about Carlos’ shitty job and the new Thai place Madison wants to try that weekend.

They don’t talk about Mikey and Julia. They never do.

Madison bids Carlos a goodnight and climbs up the stairs to her apartment, fishing her keys out of her pocket and tossing them on the side table next to the door as she walks in, making a beeline for the fridge. She pulls out a bottle of rose wine and takes a long pull straight from the bottle. It’s Thursday, which means her favorite cop drama had recorded on her DVR earlier that day. She would get spectacularly drunk, fall asleep, and then watch it again the next day when she was actually sober. But tonight was a night especially reserved for self-pity since she and Julia used to watch the show together.

Madison makes her way over to the couch, taking another pull of wine, but promptly spills most of it down her shirt as she finds herself not alone in her apartment.

For someone gifted with the power of seeing the future, you would think Madison would have seen Tony Stark sitting on her couch in the middle of her crappy apartment coming.

She didn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony would make a really terrible spy, but maybe not such a bad life coach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in two days - I'm looking out for anyone who wants to keep up with this!
> 
> This chapter is Tony's POV and the last one that focuses so much on the OC

Tony Stark is pretty sure he doesn’t get paid well enough for this. Which, really, is saying a lot because Tony Stark gets paid _a lot_. But as he squeezes himself through the window of some run-down, third story apartment, he thinks he should be making a lot more.

It all started with Steve disagreeing with him. And isn’t that just how everything starts?

The stubborn idiot refused to sign the accords (which _seriously_ pissed of Russia), ran off to recuse known criminal and former Brooklyn bad-boy, _the Winter Freaking Soldier_ , then, when Tony managed to convince the government to pardon him, he ran off again. How infuriating could one person manage to be? Sure, the guy got all the looks in the world, but sometimes Tony couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was going on in that beautiful head of his.

So here he was, like some goddamned stalker, hiding out in a girl’s apartment looking for recruits. This was infinitely worse than what it took to get to the Spiderling, but this girl’s doorman flat our refused to let Tony in, no matter how much money he shoved in the guy’s face (pros: at least this time he doesn’t have to choke down any date and walnut loaves).

Tony landed on the floor with a thud that he hoped was actually much quieter than it seemed. He stood and quickly brushed himself off (because his suit was worth at least 6 moths rent at this dump), then held out his wrist to let Friday do a scan of the room from his watch. The entire apartment was bathed in a grid of red light as Friday inspected the area for any threats or points of interest.

“No threats detected in the immediate area, Mr. Stark. Would you like me to perform a secondary scan of the area?” Friday’s tinny Irish voice is oddly comforting to him as he stands in the middle of the dingy apartment. Like a tiny reminder that, yes, he is Tony Stark and he does have a tiny AI system on his wrist that was stronger than a hundred military-grade computers put together.

“No, not necessary. Thanks, Friday.”

“Of course, Sir… If I may, sir? While there are no threats detected in the area, there is an abnormal distribution of wealth in the top left drawer of the side table located in front of you,” Friday suggests.

Tony’s gaze immediately zeroes in on the table Friday described. “Well, what do we have here…” he murmurs to himself, striding over quickly and yanking the drawer open, expecting to find some kind of secret treasure stash. What he doesn't expect to find is an engagement ring.

“Friday,” he frowns, “Why didn’t my reports on the subject include that she was engaged?”

“Because she isn’t, sir.”

Tony’s frown deepens as he turns the ring over in his hand, wondering what she was doing with it if it wasn’t hers. And if it _was,_ why keep your ring stuffed in a drawer? Especially one with this much bling, holy shit. Tony hasn’t seen this many diamonds in one place since he and Rhodey snuck into a drag queen show when they were supposed to be studying for an Advanced Physics test at 19 years-old. Tony smiles wryly to himself and is lost in the memory when he starts to hear footsteps.

“Ms. Matthews is on her way up, sir.”

Tony fumbles with the ring in his hand for a few moments before stuffing it in his pocket and pushing the drawer shut. Probably not his best idea, but he doesn’t exactly have time to worry about that right now. He strides over to her (old, oh god so old and ratty) couch and has barely sat down when he hears the keys jangling.

Madison Matthews enters the apartment, and in the dim light, Tony can see that she looks almost exactly the way she does in her file. Her blonde hair is shorter and choppier now and she has perhaps a few more lines creasing her face, but the piercing blue eyes and sharp nose let him know that this is his girl. 

He sits quietly, waiting for the opportune moment to let his presence be known when an all too familiar scene starts playing out in front of him. Madison immediately heads for the fridge, and within moments of entering the apartment has a bottle of wine clutched securely in her hand. She doesn’t even bother getting out a glass as she chugs straight from the bottle. Her blue eyes are quiet in an eerily dead way that Tony has seen in the mirror himself a few times. More than a few times, in fact. His heart clenches when he sees this poor young girl living the same kind of life he only achieved at his absolute worst.

Tony has lived in a downward spiral at multiple times in his life; when his parents died, when _he_ almost died in New York, when he brought something to life that tried to destroy the world, when he and Pepper broke up… The list seemed to be ever-growing. Hell, he had even seen his dad living the same way. Where does everyone think Tony gets it from? All he had ever seen and been taught growing up, looking up to his father, was that nothing came before a chilled bottle of scotch. Not even your wife. Not even your son.

Lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t notice the girl approaching him until his eyes lock on her blown-wide ones as wine dribbles down his chin. He might have missed the opportune moment, at some point there…

Tony rises to his feet, tugging the jacket of his suit closed with one hand while beginning to reach out for a handshake with the other.

“I’m-“

“What the fuck?” The girl cuts him off with a blunt, and startled exclamation. Tony barely manages to resist rolling his eyes. Kids these days, always so rude and vulgar, no manners whatsoever. 

Wait, did he really think that? God, hanging out with the old man was really starting to get to his head. Thinking of Steve causes an uncomfortable pang in his chest that’s hard to ignore, given their current strained relationship.

“Articulate one, aren’t you?” Tony comments drily, forgoing the handshake and instead putting one hand in his pocket and the other on his hip.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not every day that Tony Stark shows up in my apartment in the middle of the night. Uninvited,” she raises an eyebrow pointedly at him. Tony holds his hands up in defense, taking a step towards her to see how she reacts. She barely flinches but doesn’t move back. Tony smirks inwardly.

“Apologies for barging in uninvited, but see this is kind of a matter of world-wide security that your doorman didn’t really seem to be buying.” This manages to finally somewhat pique the girl’s interest.

“World-wide security,” she snorts. “Mr. Stark, I think you might be in the wrong city to be looking for any sort of security.”

Bingo. And that’s his ticket in.

“See, that’s what I thought, too,” Tony begins, starting to pace slowly back and forth. “But it appears that Baltimore has been in extremely good hands lately. The crime rate in this area has dropped 19% in the past 5 years. Any idea how that happened?” The girl has gone a shade paler as he spoke, but she stands her ground.

“No clue. Guess we’re just finally catching a break around here.” 

“Looks more to me like you guys have some sort of guardian angel,” and with this Tony brings out the big guns. He pulls his StarkTablet from his inner jacket pocket and drags up into a projection a video of an alley fight. Two guys are in leather jackets wielding pocket knives, and a third figure has a hood and a hat, his face mostly covered while he swings a bat. It’s a bit wild and uncoordinated, but the kid never misses his mark and the others guys never get a hit on him. Somehow he always sees them coming, even when he’s got his back to them.

Madison has now gone an almost ghostly shade of white. Time to really drive the point home.

“I’m looking for someone, Madison, and I think - no, I _know_ you’re that person.”

Madison furrows her eyebrows at that, clearly having expected him to say something different. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t look anything like that guy,” she gestures at the spastic vigilante swinging the bat and Tony chuckles.

“No, no, you’ve got it confused,” he explains to an ever-growing anxious Madison. “I have no interest in the bat-wielding neanderthal,” Madison’s expression goes hard at the moniker. Tony then proceeds to pull up video after video after video of the hooded guy with the bat battling it out with common street thugs. “My interest is how some guy with visibly no skill whatsoever has been managing to successfully beat the living crap out of guys twice his size, in five time the numbers, without fail for the past three years. My interest,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “is with the girl behind the curtain pulling all the strings.”

With that, every video being projected from his tablet zooms in on the background or around the corner, zeroing in on the same hooded girl every single time. Some of the images are grainy, but some of them are so clear you can see strands of her golden-blonde hair peeking out from underneath the hood. Image after image of herself is flashed in front of Madison’s eyes, which are beginning to narrow dangerously.

“What makes you so sure that’s me?”

“Oh trust me kid, I didn’t just show up here on a hunch. I ran the images through facial recognition software, tapped into the audio of the city’s street cameras to capture your voice, and hacked the security cameras of every building within a ten-mile radius of,” he points down at the ground below his feet, “right here.” He pushes a few buttons on his watch and pulls up a projection of a few pages of Madison’s file. “Look, you’ve even got your own file,” he smirks.

Madison steps forward hesitantly, eyes flicking across the words and pictures displayed in front of her as she skips the information. A small twitch that could almost be considered a half-smile tugs at her lips.

“You got my birthday wrong,” she points out, clearly taking a small amount of glee at exposing Tony’s flaw. “I was born on the 25th of January, not the 26th.”

Tony doesn’t have the heart to pull up her birth certificate where he got the date from and tell her that she’s been celebrating her birthday on the wrong day for the past 24 years. Judging from the rest of what he dug up on her childhood, he figures that was the least of her problems.

“Ya got me there,” he offers instead. 

Madison’s suspicious look returns to her face as she puts the wine bottle down a little too forcefully on the coffee table. “So what, you know my blood type, my zodiac sign, and where I spend my nights? That supposed to mean something to me?”

“Look, you seem like a pretty smart kid-“

“Not a kid.”

“-so I’m just gonna cut to the chase. I know what you can do and I need you to come fight for me.” 

If Cap gets Wanda on his team, then Tony’ll be damned if he doesn't find his own Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It really just evens out the playing field, and even if he isn’t exactly sure what Madison can do, he has a good feeling that any level of future-seeing she can do will be a great asset to his team.

“What, like, come fight with the Avengers?” 

Ok, that’s a fair question. Why would she assume Iron Man was asking her to join any other team? But it was a bit more complicated than that at the present moment. Did his team still count as the Avengers when they were fighting against their captain?

“Some of them.” There, that wasn’t a lie. But Madison seems to sense the deceit in his words.

Just as he’s about to open his mouth to start spewing some pretty words and promises to get her to join him, the blue irises of her eyes start creeping outwards until there’s no white left in them. She stares right at him, but seems to be looking past him at the same time. It feels oddly invasive and Tony shifts uncomfortably, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket as her lips curl into a displeased shape.

“Some of the Avengers I will be fighting with. Others I will be fighting against.” Okay, Tony was busted. He probably should’ve thought a little harder before he lied to someone who could see the future… And clearly had a pretty good grasp on the whole concept. There were no random flashes of visions she couldn’t control or understand, she seemed capable of finding exactly what she was looking for whenever she wanted to. Now _that_ was something Tony needed to get on his side.

“Okay, yes,” he admits, “I may have bent the truth a little.”

“Why are you fighting each other?” She questions, looking genuinely confused. She flinches as she stares into space at something Tony can only assume comes from the fight between his team and Steve’s. 

“It’s kind of complicated, very political, I don’t want to bore you with all the details.”

“Then I don’t want to fight with you. I do not fight for something I don't believe in.” The blue bleeds out of her eyes and she fixes him with a determined gaze.

And that’s how Tony ended up spending the next 45 minutes explaining the whole shebang to Madison. At some point she ended up picking the bottle of wine back up, but to give the kid some credit, she did appear to be paying close attention to what Tony was saying.

“I don’t know if I can just up and leave… I have a life here, you know? People who will actually miss me,” Madison objects when Tony has finished story time. And, okay. That wasn’t a ‘no’.

“Come on kid-“

“Not a kid!”

“-you’re young, and powerful, and I’m giving you a chance here to help people - to make the world a safer place!”

“A safer place… from Captain America?” She raises her eyebrows incredulously and, yeah, that’s really not what Tony meant. Even just hearing her interpret his proposition like that out loud is a hard pill to swallow. It’s really quite annoying just how difficult he’s finding this entire situation with Steve.

“Look, do you wanna protect Baltimore, or protect the world?” Tony snaps finally. Madison’s eyes go hard and he should probably start backtracking now. Asking people for favors was never really Tony’s strong suit. “I know you’re a good person, Madison. And for some reason, you have enough faith left in this world that you think it can be saved. Well, guess what? I’m crazy enough, just like you, to believe the same thing. So why don’t you come with me and help me accomplish that? It has nothing to do with who’s right or wrong, I just need your help to keep people safe and do the right thing. Because believe it or not, I’m not always really great at that, no matter how hard I try. You can help me make the right choices. Think you can handle that?”

There’s a long beat of silence as Madison’s face screws up in concentration as she grapples with the offer he’s given her. He can’t blame the kid, he’s asking for a lot and she doesn’t quite have the… gumption that Peter had for getting involved in conflict. But what could it be that was still holding her back?

Oh. That must be it.

“Look,” Tony says after she still hasn’t responded for a while. “I’m sure your boyfriend will be able to manage without you for a little while, if that makes you feel any better.”

“I don’t - what boyfriend?” Madison’s face scrunches up in confusion that doesn't _look_ fake, but Tony has met some pretty good liars in his life.

“Your apparently very rich boyfriend,” Tony says, pulling the engagement ring he found earlier out of his pocket and holding it up so that the diamonds catch the light. 

This was totally the wrong thing to do. 

Madison is out of her seat in a flash, snatching the ring out of Tony’s hand and standing over him with fists clenched. Tony really hopes she doesn’t punch him in the face because he is really not in the mood anymore tonight. 

“What are you doing with this?” She growls out, probably only keeping herself from yelling so she doesn’t wake up her neighbors. Tony has a good feeling the walls aren’t very thick in this place.

“I was going to give that back all along.”

Madison turns angrily away from him and unclenches her fist to stare at the ring in the palm of her hand. Slowly, the angry, hard lines of her body melt into something more resigned. Tony holds his breath and waits for her to speak again, but he’s pretty sure he actually just did something right for once.

“It’s not my ring,” Madison finally speaks again, her voice sounding a bit more hoarse and raw than it did before. “It was my best friend’s.”

Tony feels a little bit like kicking himself in the gut. But the next thing he knows, Madison is turned around looking more determined than he’s seen her all night.

“I’ll come with you. But only to keep people safe, NOT to fight against the others.” 

Tony can work with that. He holds his hand out (and she actually takes it this time) and shakes Madison's hand with a smirk.

“Welcome to the team.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is when things get Civil War compliant and the rest of the Avengers show up
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve reflects on what happened between him and Tony before greeting his esteemed battle guests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all still reading! I'm excited to get this story flowing for real, so without further ado, here's some Steve POV for ya

Steve Rogers wasn’t used to feeling helpless. Even when he was just a scrawny kid with two left feet, weighing 100-pounds soaking wet, he never truly felt _helpless_. A bit worse for wear and bruised, yeah, but Steve’s problem pre-serum was that he always felt _invincible_. Even with the odds stacked against him and his arms pinned behind his back, Steve always felt like he had a fighting chance. Usually that was the point at which Bucky stepped in, but even then, Steve always had himself convinced that if Bucky hadn’t shown up, Steve still would have managed to get the upper hand eventually.

He realizes now that was perhaps a bit foolhardy of him, but he’s still proud of the determined person he was nonetheless.

But that day he was handed the Accords, looking into the intense, determined brown eyes of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers felt truly helpless for the first time in his life.

Tony had become something of a close friend of Steve’s in the months following the Ultron disaster. When Tony had returned back to his neck of New York, leaving Steve and Natasha to train the new Avengers, Steve found that his parting words to Tony held a lot of truth to them: he _did_ miss the other man - embarrassingly soon after they went their separate ways, if he was being honest with himself.

So, he made it a point to reach out to Tony quite often in the following weeks. He convinced himself (and hopefully Tony, as well) that he was doing it to check on Tony’s well-being. He knew the genius had a tendency to spiral out of control when it came to the aftermath of earth-shattering events like what happened with Ultron, so he made it his mission to check on Tony’s sleeping patterns, eating habits, social interactions, etc. to make sure that he was still healthy and sane. 

Honestly, Steve didn’t like the Tony-sized hole left in the Avengers new training facility. There were awkward pauses that Steve was pretty sure only he noticed where Tony would have filled in the silence with a witty (and most-likely vaguely insulting) quip. The coffee maker in the community lounge had been broken for the past 2 weeks and no one had been able to fix it yet. The DVR had a suspicious lack of Downton Abbey recorded on it since Tony left (he _knew_ Happy had gotten the man hooked on the show, no matter how many times Tony denied ownership of the recordings). The lab was a subdued and quiet environment and nothing had caught fire in far too long for Steve’s liking. Tony wasn’t around to laugh like a kid at Christmas when Steve tried (and inevitably failed) to grasp a modern concept and make a bumbling fool out of himself.

Steve missed the way that Tony wasn’t afraid to poke fun at Steve and push his limits, even though he was the leader of the team. He missed having someone treat him like an equal, unafraid of what Steve’s status and power meant.

Funnily enough, Steve actually missed the challenge Tony posed to his authority.

While when they first met, Steve had felt threatened by Tony’s endless questioning of every decision he made, he now realizes that Tony made him a better leader. Almost in preparation of the onslaught of questions he knew the other man would ask him, Steve made it a point to mentally ask himself just as many questions before he made any decisions. After a while, he was no longer a stuttering, defensive mess when Tony started asking him all of the specifics and logistics of his plans, he was calm and collected and so, so _sure_ of his actions.

Tony always looked so smug when Steve finally started to have all the answers. Steve figured it should be _him_ looking pleased with himself, but really, Tony had every right to take the credit.

Tony was smart and fearless and self-sacrificing to the point that it could almost be considered a flaw instead of a positive characteristic, and Steve knew he would make a great leader. Maybe even better than him. But Tony never made any moves to take his place, he just supported him quietly (not really that quietly) from the background. Steve had grown to trust him like the brother in arms that he was.

And because he knew all of these things about Tony, and because he had grown to respect (care for?) the other man, and because he really did enjoy fighting on a team with him, Steve Rogers felt really and truly helpless when he found them on opposing sides of an argument.

Steve liked to think he had grown to understand Tony, and was able to read him as well as anyone could expect to be able to read someone as complex as Tony Stark. And Steve could see, without a doubt, the resolution in Tony’s eyes that day. When Tony pulled up the picture of that boy who had died in Sokovia and started talking about his life, Steve could feel his throat constricting tightly the entire time because he could tell how much it had gotten to Tony. He felt for Tony, but he knew, at that point, that there was no more talking sense with him. The other man had made up his mind, and God moving the Earth himself would not change Tony’s mind.

It hurt spectacularly bad because he _did_ understand where Tony was coming from and he wanted to support his teammate (friend?) in his decision, but Steve just couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

That scrawny boy from Brooklyn just wouldn’t let him do it. 

Like hell would he ever in a million years step aside and let the government tell him who he could and could not protect.

And like hell was he going to let them take away his Bucky.

Steve glances over at the boy in question, to find him fiddling with something on his robotic arm and muttering Russian under his breath, leaning casually against the door of the (admittedly small) getaway car that they had been sharing with Sam about 15 minutes prior. They were now waiting in an airport parking garage somewhere in Germany to get on a flight to Siberia to stop a psychotic fake-therapist from unleashing a small army of the world’s strongest men and women onto the public.

Yeah, Steve could safely say that his life had taken a turn for the worse when he and Tony began having “creative differences.”

But first they needed some back up…

As if on cue, a rusty white van comes careening into the parking garage, swerving into a spot a few feet away from where Steve, Sam and Bucky are waiting, and tilting dangerously to the side with the force of the momentum before settling all four wheels onto the ground with a _clang._

Steve has a pretty good idea he knows who’s driving.

Clint Barton comes strolling out of the driver’s side door and around the van to shake Steve’s hand.

“Thanks for coming, Clint. I hate to ask this of you, but-“

“Ah, don’t worry about it, Cap. Retirement’s for the birds anyways.” Clint furrows his brow as the words leave his mouth. “I mean for- it’s for the - well, it’s not for _this_ bird.” He laughs, opening the passenger side door to help Wanda Maximoff to her feet. She smiles sweetly at Steve and nods her head in greeting. Steve tries to ignore the cautious gazes they throw over his shoulder at Bucky.

Clint walks towards the back of the van and yanks the sliding door open. “Brought you a present.”

There’s a decidedly unmanly yelp from within the van as light streams in for the first time in what Steve assumes has been hours. Scott Lang flails around for a few moments, tangling himself in his own limbs. When Clint has decided he’s had enough of the spectacle, he reaches an arm into the van and grabs Lang by the collar of his rumpled, plaid shirt, pulling him out and manhandling him into an upright position.

“Oh, wow, Cap-Captain America,” Scott’s eyes grow wide as he looks up at Steve like he hung the Moon. “Holy shit, it’s such an honor, your honor. I mean, I can’t believe I was actually invited to this, this, whatever this is - I don’t even care what it is, we could be murdering my grandma - please say we aren’t murdering my grandma? Anyways, I’m just so humbled by your presence, this is so far out! Oh my god, do people even say that? I’m so sorry that I just said that.”

Scott Lang is a good guy, Steve decides. He reeks of coffee, doesn’t seem to have much control over his mouth, and has a Twizzler sticking out of his back pocket, but Steve can still see the good character that lays underneath. However, that doesn’t stop him from becoming painfully uncomfortable under Lang’s praises. Lang doesn’t know him all that well - has never met him before, in fact. Steve doesn’t blame him for not knowing how much he hated all the fanfare of being Captain America. He didn’t like people treating him like he was more than a man. That kind of mindset was what allowed leaders to turn into dictators, and Steve hated to even think that he was capable of such a thing 

Clint, who _does_ know Steve that well, can sense the stiffness of his smile and cuffs Lang on the back of the head to put and end to his rambling. Steve’s smile grows more genuine as he thanks Clint with it. Clint gives a barely perceptible nod of his head in return and it means enough.

“Glad you could make it, Scott. We need all the help we can get, and I hear you’re a pretty handy guy to have around.” Steve claps Scott on the shoulder as he walks past him to discuss logistics with Clint. He hears Scott greet Sam and Bucky along with something that sounded dangerously like “C3P0”, and Steve isn’t 100% sure but he thinks that might be a Star Wars reference which (lucky for Lang) means that Bucky won’t understand it either.

Just as he and Clint are getting into the details of their landing in Siberia, an alarm starts to go off in the parking garage and there’s an announcement made in German that he can’t understand.

“They’re evacuating the airport,” Bucky informs everyone, and Steve doesn’t want to know why Bucky understands German now.

“The plane will not fly us to Siberia anymore?” Wanda confirms. Steve shakes his head 

“Shit, Stark is flushing us out…” Clint mutters.

Steve looks around at the small group gathered around him and finds them all looking back at him expectantly. Sam breaks into a small grin when Steve meets his eyes and holds his hands out, palms out towards him in a ‘go on’ gesture of confidence.

“You’re the Captain.”

Damn right he was.

“Stark and his team just arrived.” 

Shit.

If there was one thing Tony Stark made Steve good at, it was planning on his toes and planning effectively. Within a moment’s notice, Steve had planned for the best possible outcome and the worst possible outcome. He had battle strategies playing out in his mind and an escape plan all ready to go. Steve figured Tony and whoever he was bringing with him had to get there somehow, and with their flight getting shut down, he was planning on high-jacking whatever they had used. With visual confirmation from Sam, Steve had located the Quinjet and strategized the quickest path there. 

After all, he’d be letting Tony down if he didn’t have everything planned out, down to the last detail.

And he sure hated to let Tony down.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a slow chapter, I apologize, but so much is going to happen next chapter that I wanted to save it all up and just get this part out of the way.
> 
> Next update coming very soon! Finally, #TeamIronMan and #TeamCap will meet and it will be sO MUCH BETTER THAN THE MOVIE BECAUSE I PROMISE TO FIX ALL THE BAD THINGS AND MAKE THEM GO AWAY


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle of the airport at Germany takes place.

Tony has never wanted to _not_ do something so badly in his life.

And for Tony Stark, that’s saying a lot. From the age of five, he had been paraded around by his parents in three-piece suits to make appearances at press conferences, or show off his ridiculously advanced brain for big fancy scientists, or Stark Industries shareholders. Or, on one particularly awful occasion, a beauty pageant. 

But more than anything in the world, Tony didn’t want to fight Steve. 

Tony didn’t want to have to look into those righteous blue eyes and have to give in to the order to attack if met with resistance - didn’t know if he actually _could_ do that. There were a hundred reasons he could think of to _not_ fight Steve, but unfortunately he only needed one reason to do it. And wasn’t that just the typical irony of Tony Stark’s life? The one person he had actually grown to really trust and care for was the one person he had to stand against.

It was probably all Steve’s fault that Tony was even alive to see this day come. The stubborn bastard had refused to let Tony go more than three goddamn days without being reminded that he was expected by someone out there to keep living. Steve would relentlessly call and text (which took about a week on it’s own to teach him about), luring Tony into this false sense of mattering. 

But the truth was, Steve would’ve been better off just letting Tony go. Tony was nothing but a hassle, _he_ was the one who put the world in jeopardy in the first place, and now he was the one getting in Steve’s way. He was unappreciative and paid Steve for his kindness with war.

Tony had no right existing on the same plane as Steve Rogers. Steve should’ve stayed far away from Tony and let him quietly slip away, causing no more problems for Steve or the rest of the Avengers.

But here he was, leading his very own ragtag team into battle with Captain America. 

Here he was, repaying Steve for his friendship with mutiny. 

Tony sighed heavily and put the Quinjet on autopilot before turning around and facing the other occupants. 

“We’ll be in Germany in about 45 minutes, so if you have a suit -“ Tony practically choked on his own tongue as he forcefully swallowed down the words, _suit up._ Because that was Steve’s catchphrase and Tony had absolutely no right to let it pass through his lips. “Put it on.” He finishes lamely, avoiding eye contact with Natasha, who was pinning him with a sad, imploring gaze that he couldn’t stand right now. 

“Here, kid,” Tony handed Madison a jacket in one hand and a comm ear piece in the other. The jacket was specially designed by him to cover enough of her that she could hide in the shadows, but the large hood bowed in a way that she could still see beyond it. 

She accepted the offered items gratefully and looked up at Tony with large, trusting eyes. Tony swallows past a lump in his throat at the very possibility that he was going to let her down, because there was very much a possibility that he was leading this kid on a mission to her death. He was suddenly filled with a sense of urgency and dread.

“Listen to me, you stay out of the line of fire, okay?” Madison opens her mouth to protest, but Tony fixes her with a hard look that leaves no room for argument. He would never be able to get past it if the young girl that he had dragged into this was hurt, or worse. She seemed to read that in his look and let out a resigned huff before nodding her head.

“Good. Now listen, this jacket is lined with reflective panels that will keep you basically invisible, as long as you stay out of the open and don’t draw attention to yourself. If anyone does find you, you surrender. Do not, under any circumstances engage any members of the other team. You back down, they’ll let you go.”

“Okay, jeez, why don’t you just design me a giant bubble to hide in.” 

Tony thinks about it for a minute.

“Stop thinking about it!” Tony laughs and ruffles Madison’s hair in a way he knows will annoy the hell out of her before walking over to where Peter was suiting up and giving him a variation of the same speech. Peter, Tony was allowing to engage in combat, of course, but if any situation got too hairy, he was given the order to surrender. Peter agreed a bit more easily than Madison, which was probably due to the fact that he was too busy messing around with the new suit Tony had designed him and thanking him profusely for it. 

He’s in the middle of talking Rhodey through a new feature he added to the War Machine when Natasha approached him. Rhodey politely excuses himself when he sees the serious look in her eyes, and if Tony wasn’t directly on the receiving end of them, he would do the same thing. Natasha was almost always serious, but there was something calculating in her expression that Tony had only seen a few times. It always managed to make him squirm.

“We’ll be landing in ten.” Natasha’s eyes roam his face carefully, as if she’s trying to read something written across it in a really tiny font. “You ready?”

Tony lets out a nervous bark of laughter that he really hopes sounds more natural than it felt when it clawed its way out of his throat. The unamused look on her face tells him that it didn’t.

Suddenly, Tony just feels really tired. That was probably the scariest thing about Natasha. In a way that seemed like she wasn’t really trying, but that had probably been executed in a painstakingly precise way that only super-ninja spies could do, she managed to crash right through your walls. Not even _crash_ necessarily, it was more like a Trojan Horse kind of infiltration. You didn’t even see it coming, you accidentally invited it in, and now it was in your head.

“I’m still not entirely sure I can do this,” Tony admits, refusing to meet Natasha’s eyes any longer for fear that she’ll manage to delve even deeper into reasons that Tony himself still refuses to think about. Luckily for him, Natasha doesn’t press it any further, just nods her head with a troubled look in her eyes.

“The team monitoring Steve and the Winter Soldier reported back this morning.” Tony notes how she purposefully only uses Steve’s real name and not Bucky’s. “Barton’s joined up with them.”

And, _oh_. That explains the look in Natasha’s eyes. While Tony felt for her, really he did, he was a bit confused as to why she was sharing this information so intimately with him. It wasn’t like Natasha to share her feelings with anyone besides Barton himself, really, so Tony was having trouble putting the pieces of their conversation together when Natasha decided to lay it out for him.

“What I mean is, I know how you feel Tony. You’re not the only one who’s going to have to face their best friend today. It’s okay if you’re not ready, because I’m really not either. It’s not easy, I know, fighting with someone you lo-“

“Whoa, whoa, wait, hold it right there!” Tony interjects before she can get the entirety of the final word out, his heart hammering in his chest so that he can hear it pounding in his ears. Natasha raises her perfectly arched eyebrows as if in disbelief that he was actually going to try and contradict her right now. But honestly Tony thought it was incredibly unfair that Natasha was going to try and pull the L-word out on him at this particular moment.

It wasn’t even really so much that he _didn’t_ love Steve, because Tony didn’t really know. Maybe he did? Maybe he loved them all? The possibility had certainly crossed Tony’s mind that he loved the Avengers like he loved his family - well, not his real family, of course - the family he had built for himself consisting of Happy and Rhodey and even his dearly beloved ex-girlfriend, Pepper. His most trusted inner circle. Over time, Tony slowly felt this new family of trained assassins and science experiments becoming his family as well. 

Tony wanted nothing more than to protect his family, because he could admit he loved them. It was easy enough for him to admit, until he started thinking about applying that same love Steve. When the baby-blues came into play, Tony’s brain circuits went haywire and he could literally feel his cognitive functions go into overdrive. He started to contemplate the various definitions of the word, trying to fit one to Steve like matching jigsaw pieces. The more he tried shoving the two pieces together - Steve and Love - the more frustrated he got. So at a certain point, he forced himself to stop trying.

Deep down, he probably did know what the missing piece was, but he couldn’t bring himself to put the puzzle together. He knew it would only end up hurting someone - he didn’t know if it would be worse if it was him or Steve.

It hindered his ability to think, so Natasha bringing up that specific point in their conversation was definitely not Tony’s idea of helpful.

“Okay,” he surrenders. “This all officially sucks. We have been ordered by the government to detain our own teammates, I somehow ended up as the principal of the Breakfast Club,” Tony jerks a thumb in Madison and Peter’s direction. “I haven't slept in-“

“Forty-six hours and nineteen minutes,” Friday supplies.

“Forty-six hours and nineteen minutes,” Tony parrots, a flash of exhaustion weighing him down as he takes into account for the first time since the _last time_ he slept just how long it had been. “And it’s… it’s Steve.” He finishes lamely, and Natasha nods her head like she can read his mind and knows what that inarticulate sentiment was supposed to mean. He thinks maybe she really does.

“None of this is easy. For any of us,” she soothes. He lips quirk up into a wry smile. “On the bright side, winner’s going to get bragging rights for the next century.” And somehow that was exactly what Tony needed to hear to lift the suffocating weight off of his chest. It wasn’t because he wanted bragging rights though, it was the idea that one day they would all come back together and there would be this sense of _normal_ , of the way things were before again.

“You know the way straight into my heart, Widow.” Tony allows himself to smirk back at her and they look out the window together as the Quinjet descends. He makes a point of not looking at her and making her feel uncomfortable when her hand slips into his and gives it a tight squeeze. 

It helps him remember that he’s not the only one who’s about to go out there and break their own heart.

* * *

“Who’s this guy? And what’s up with the mask? Was there a poisonous gas leak? Where are all of your hazmat suits?”

Tony’s gestures wildly to the man in the maroon suit and the mask that made it look like he was about to go scuba diving. The man stands in line, perfectly poised and at attention, just the way Tony would expect Captain America’s team to look. That is, until Tony speaks, and then suddenly the man is twitchy and sputtering defenses and petty insults. Tony can admit, it was a low blow to go after the new guy, but as was a common occurrence in his life, he found himself unable to keep his smart-mouthed comments to himself. 

Finding Steve and his team has been an easier task than Tony expected. They were right out in the open on the roof of the parking garage, making no attempts to hide themselves or escape. They were ready to fight, and the very idea filled Tony with an unshakeable sense of dread.

But it made sense. They were following Steve’s orders, and Steve was as honorable as he was beautiful. He wouldn't back down and he wouldn’t surrender, he would win or lose facing his opponents head on. Tony watched him do it about a hundred times, and always swelled with pride when he stood with Captain America, ready for anything, prepared to face whoever stood in his way.

Tony shuddered to realize that that was _him_ this time.

It gave him little, but welcomed comfort, however, that he wasn’t standing alone. Natasha was tense on his left side, eyeing Barton warily, but holding a stance that told Tony she was prepared to fight. Rhodey, always his right-hand man stood next to him on that side, faceplate drawn over his face, unlike Tony’s whose was open, exposing him. No words could describe the appreciation Tony felt for his friend, who had followed him into the line of fire more times than Tony could count, and consistently had his back (no matter how badly he fucked up).

Peter was standing on the other side of Natasha and Tony could practically _hear_ the kid vibrating with excited energy. The moment the Quinjet touched down, Tony had ordered Madison to scram and make herself scarce. He scanned the area quickly, but without the tech of his suit enhancing his vision, he was confident to realize he couldn’t find her. He assumed she was in the shadows around the corner of the building a few hundred feet behind Steve’s team, because based on the clips of her times with Carlos, that seemed to be where she’d be most comfortable.

Black Panther and Vision were hovering at the outskirts, but Tony wasn’t particularly worried about either of them because a) Vision was virtually indestructible, and b) he wasn’t even entirely sure Black Panther was on his team, the dude had just kind of shown up a few times and tried to disembowel Barnes. But, he was standing on Tony’s side of the line, apparently awaiting his instruction, so he figured that meant Black Panther was on his team. Which, yay, because that guy totally kicked ass and had an entire suit made out of vibranium. Tony had every intention to try and track T’challa down later and convince him to let Tony sneak a closer peek at it.

“Tony,” Steve admonished, cutting off the other guy’s indignant shouts that Tony had barely realized were still being thrown at him. Tony’s head whipped around to look into Steve’s eyes and he was floored.

Because they were hard. And they were angry. And they were a mask that Tony knew and could see through all too well.

Steve was in pain. He was hiding it well, for the benefit of his team Tony supposed, but he could see the scratches of it making their way to the surface. Fighting and tearing Steve apart behind the windows of his deep blue eyes. 

More than anything, Tony just wanted this all to end. He wanted them all to lay down their weapons and go home. To fight over who got the corner seat on the sectional couch and who had to make the popcorn and listen to Clint complaining about how it was too cold and Natasha complaining that it was too hot (and Clint ultimately agreeing to let them turn the thermostat down as he piled a bunch of blankets on top of himself and glared at Natasha, but with a lot of fondness).

But Tony couldn’t do that, because he had ruined enough. He had put the world in enough danger. He had woken up in the middle of the night screaming because he could see too many people’s blood staining his hands already. He couldn’t stand to let it get any worse. For reasons that were completely to blame on Steve Rogers, Tony wanted to get better. The Accords were his first step towards getting better, and he could only hope that when this was all said and done, Steve would understand and he would forgive him. In some twisted way, Tony was doing this _for_ Steve, but there was no way he’d ever be able to explain that to the other man.

The Accords were his redemption. His chance at fixing himself and making himself someone who was worth all of the attention and care Steve had given him.

“None of this has to happen. Please Steve, just let us take you guys back and we can work all of this out. None of you will be punished - even Bucky! Come on Steve, they’ll pardon Bucky and he’ll just have to get some psychiatric help because his brain is like a discombobulated Rubiks Cube right about now - sorry, no offense or anything - and this can all be avoided. Just don’t, just don’t do this.” Tony was a rambling mess at this point, but he couldn’t find it in him to stop.

“Come on,” Tony pleaded. “Let’s go home, Steve.”

And for one terrifying moment, Steve shattered. His glass walls crumbled and he was scared, and stricken, and so, so _broken_ that it took everything within Tony not to cross the expanse between them and crush the man into a hug. Perhaps if they were alone, he could have done it. But as it was, Steve’s walls were back up in the blink of an eye, and the two men stood resolutely on their respective sides of the battlefield.

“I’m sorry, Tony, but I can’t.” And the thing of it was that Steve really did sound like he was sorry, and if the broken man Tony had seen only moments before was anything to go off of, Steve hated this just as much as he did. 

Before Tony had time to analyze the situation any further or try to convince Steve to change his mind again, Steve and his team were advancing on them. It started out as a purposeful stride, but as Tony watched in horror, they began to rush them.

“They’re not stopping,” Peter worried, and looked to Tony for guidance. 

Tony couldn’t let his one chance of redemption slip away.

“Stop them,” he growled out to his team, before sliding his Iron Man faceplate into place and taking his spot in the air alongside Rhodey. “Leave Steve to me,” he added as an afterthought, hating how desperate it sounded. Everyone merely nodded their heads in agreement and followed him as they charged into the fray.

* * *

“Repulsor blast to your right, not too high though unless you wanna take off the Winter Soldier’s head,” Madison advised him through the comm system. Tony ducked a punch from Steve and sent his shield flying just far enough away that he had time to take care of Bucky before Steve returned. Following Madison’s instructions, he aimed just low enough to nail the assassin in the sternum, knocking him back with enough force to send him crashing through the cement wall of the building behind him.

Turning back just in time, he caught another punch coming from Steve in his right hand, holding up his left arm to block the Captain’s shield that came swinging for the side of his head. The two men paused, breathing heavily, and let up some of the strength in their stances. Tony didn’t miss the momentary truce for what it was, and he took this time to look around and take inventory of how his team was holding up. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Steve doing the same thing.

The first thing he noticed was that Madison was still thankfully out of sight, but he could hear her in his ear yelling strike patterns and maneuvers to the other members of his team. Black Panther was quickly advancing on Bucky, who was scrambling to free himself from the rubble of the wall Tony had sent him through. Just as it looked like the cat would catch his prey, Falcon came swooping out of the air with an annoyed huff, and scooped Bucky off of his feet and into the air, where Rhodey joined in the chase. The War Machine suit pursued the men in the air, while Black Panther followed along on the ground, leaping to swipe at Bucky’s legs every couple of strides.

Peter was holding his own against the new guy from Cap’s team. He managed to snag the guy around the chest with a web and pulled him in close to deliver a punch that knocked him backwards far enough that he was out of the grip of Peter’s webbing. As Peter advanced on him again, Tony watched, baffled, as the guy seemed to disappear and then reappear at random intervals. He would’ve taken the time to try and figure out what was going on to help Peter, but Madison was guiding him through the fight over the comms just fine. 

Apparently, the guy was _shrinking_. Tony didn’t even want to know where Steve found him. 

If the sharp intake of breath is anything to go off of, Steve sees the next group of people fighting at the same time that Tony does. He can’t blame Steve for the reaction, it was pretty jarring to look over and see your teammates - people you _know_ care deeply for each other - trying to beat each other down. 

Natasha had a few slices in the arms of her uniform where blood was seeping through, presumably where she’d been caught by Clint’s arrows. Barton, himself was sporting a split lip and staggered on his feet when Natasha caught him with a swift jab to the diaphragm. 

They were fighting, but they were holding back, anyone who had fought with them for more than five minutes could clearly see that. They danced warily around each other in a way that was unlike the normal fighting pattern of the swift and precise assassins. Their movements were jilted as if they didn’t want to catch the other person, or they _did_ want the other person to catch them.

The fight that was transpiring between Vision and Wanda was a lot harder to comprehend for someone watching from afar. But Tony knew Vision, Tony had _created_ Vision (with a little help from Thor, he would admit) and this? Whatever Vision was doing? Was not what Tony knew he could do. But judging by the way Wanda had sank to her knees on the ground below where he was hovering in the air, clutching at her temples and bowing her head in defeat, he figured it was working out just fine for him.

The most unsettling thing, though, was the sadness in Vision’s eyes. Tony didn’t even know Vision was _capable_ of such feelings. But as he took Wanda down, in what Tony assumed was the most gentle way Vision could manage, remorse shone bright in his synthetic eyes. 

It was then that Tony realized that Steve wasn’t watching the rest of the field anymore, Steve was watching _him_. Tony turned his head to meet Steve’s eyes and suddenly they were standing too close, and it was like Tony couldn’t breathe. Because there was that _look_ in Steve’s eyes. There was this sadness and disappointment and Tony didn’t know if it was with Steve himself, or with Tony, but he had a pretty good track record of disappointing people and Steve was basically baseball and apple pie personified, so he had a feeling the disappointment was aimed at him.

And the worst part was the also all-too-familiar feeling that followed the look Steve was giving him. Tony didn’t know what Steve wanted him to _do._ He didn’t know how to fix this, he didn’t know what Steve expected. Tony didn’t know what to say. Tony had no idea how to make a situation better, he was only capable of making things worse and no matter how _fucking badly_ he wanted to make this right and wanted to take back everything he had done to hurt Steve, he just _couldn’t._ _He couldn’t… He couldn’t…_

Tony couldn’t breathe.

He took a staggered few steps away from Steve and watched the sadness in his eyes melt into something more worried and confused, and maybe even a bit guarded as if he wasn’t sure if Tony was about to attack him again. 

That just made Tony’s struggle to breath even harder.

“Friday,” he gasped inside the suit, praying that Steve couldn’t hear him. “What are the oxygen levels in this tin can? It feels… it feels like… I’m not…” Tony stumbled back a few more steps and Steve took a cautious step forward. Tony thought he saw Steve’s lips form the shape of his name, but he found that he couldn’t really hear anymore either.

“O2 levels are at 20.8%, sir. Normal atmospheric level. It appears to me that what you are suffering from is not a lack of Oxygen, but in fact a degree of anxiety attack.” 

Anxiety attack. Great, just what Tony needed. Just what his _team_ needed - their fearless leader curled into fetal position at the feet of Captain America as he failed to do a task as simple as breathing. Steve was taking another step forward and Tony just couldn’t stand that. He had already let Steve down, he knew that, but he couldn’t let the rest of his team down.

Before Steve could get any closer, Tony fires up the thrusters on his boots and gloves and goes soaring into the air. It takes a few minutes, but suspended above the battlefield, able to see everything (and able to _not_ see Steve as much), Tony manages to calm himself down and start breathing regularly again.

When he looks down again to try and find Steve he sees that he has joined in the fight between Peter and the guy Madison has been calling ‘Ant-Man’ over the comms (Tony assumed she hadn’t come up with the codename herself, and had instead picked it out of a future conversation).

“Fate,” Tony orders, using Madison’s own codename. “Keep an eye on Peter, he’s a David fighting two Goliaths over there.” 

“Got him,” Madison assured, and Tony trusted her to look after him while he decided to join Rhodey and Black Panther in their pursuit of Bucky and Wilson, because to be honest, it just looked like too much damn fun to miss out on. 

The four of them were definitely fighting the hardest out of anyone else on the roof of the parking garage that day. They seemed like the only ones with enough conviction (or in Bucky’s case, a will to live) to keep at it the way they were without letting up.

Just as he aims his thrusters to send him in the direction of Rhodey, he stops short when he hears Madison yelling - not just in the comm system in his ear, but into the open battlefield.

“Captain, get down!” Tony sees a flash of Madison’s reflective jacket out of the corner of his eye, but she disappears out of sight before Steve can comprehend what’s going on. He simply follows his instinct and does as Madison commanded, ducking low just as a stray repulsor blast from the War Machine goes shooting over his head, grazing just the tips of a few slightly longer blonde hairs.

When Steve returns to a standing position, unharmed, but eyes darting wildly around the rooftop looking for the source of the warning, Tony realizes that he had stopped breathing again when Madison shouted. He sucks in a deep breath and glares at no one inside his suit.

“Who’s team are you on?” He accuses, with no real heat behind it as he scans for a good opening to enter the chase.

“I told you,” Madison huffs over the comm system. “I’m here to keep people alive. That includes both teams.” Tony feels a misplaced sense of pride blooming in his chest. “Besides,” she continues nonchalantly. “If I had let Captain America die just now, the grief and guilt would have been too much for you to bear and you would’ve lived in a downward spiral of soul-crushing agony until eventually you drank too much, passed out, choked on your own vomit, and died as well.”

There’s something so unsettling in the matter-of-fact tone of her voice, and Tony knows that what she’s saying isn’t speculation. It _is_ fact. Even more unsettling is that Tony can definitely see that happening. The very thought that Steve almost just died has his vision going spotty. (That could also be due to the lack of sleep.) 

“Yeah, whatever,” he grumbles noncommittally, feeling the sudden desperate urge for a rush of adrenaline. Thrusters fired up, Tony swoops down low close to the ground, rounding the corner of the building before flying closely up the side of it and emerging right in the middle of the chase for Falcon and Barnes.

“You getting in on this, Tones?” Rhodey teases as Tony flies up alongside of him.

“You know I’m always down to tag-team with you, Honeybunch,” Tony fires back suggestively. Rhodey chuckles, muttering fondly under his breath and Tony can hear the rest of his team grumbling and complaining over the comm system about his lewd comments. He allows himself to crack a small grin and feels the weight on his chest dissipate just a little bit, like the hand clenched around his lungs loosened its grip infinitesimally.

Tony loses himself in the chase, watching with barely contained amusement when Falcon finds himself with War Machine and Iron Man flanking him on both sides and decides that Barnes is just slowing him down too much.

“Are you kidding me?” Barnes gripes when Falcon drops him out of the air and onto the top of a semi-truck. He rolls and lands in a crouch, his eye going comically wide when he looks over his shoulder and sees T’challa still hot on his tail.

“Sorry man, you ain’t earned that level of loyalty just yet,” Wilson calls back to Bucky, increasing his speed and spinning through the air as he tries to evade Tony and Rhodey. Tony feels his jaw tick when Falcon begins firing at them from weapons that _Tony_ installed into his wing-pack for him.

He decides that for the sake of winning the battle, he could sacrifice one of his inventions. 

“Hey Vision, how about we take out some of Falcon’s gadgets. I think it’s about time he just goes for a nice, leisurely glide - sans _my_ weapons,” Tony requests through the comm system. Vision agrees, and not a moment later Tony sees the familiar yellow beam that can only have come from the infinity stone (whatever _that_ was) in the center of Vision’s forehead.

The next few moments feel like they happen in slow motion. 

Just as Vision’s blast is about to take out Falcon’s fire power, Wilson swoops out of the way. The stray beam hits War Machine directly in the power source on his chest. As the mechanic of the War Machine, Tony knows all too well what’s going to happen next.

Everyone on the field, both sides, seem to stop what they’re doing and turn to watch in horror to watch what happens next.

Rhodey is plummeting towards the ground in a metal death trap and no one is close enough to save him.

For what feels like the thousandth time that day, Tony can’t breathe. Except this time, he feels like he never will again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh sorry for leaving you guys there! What happens next is already typed up, but I wanted to break up the scene. I have too many more plans for it to all fit into one chapter!
> 
> Hope you guys are enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it - after the battle scenes are finished, there will be some fluffy domestic- Avengers shit so prepare yourselves for that


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The real enemy is revealed.

_Rhodey is plummeting towards the ground in a metal death trap and no one is close enough to save him._

_For what feels like the thousandth time that day, Tony can’t breathe. Except this time, he feels like he never will again._  

“Iron Man,” Madison’s voice in his ear is a mixture of forced calm and barely hidden panic. “You and Falcon won’t make it in time. I’m working on figuring out another option but you.. you won’t make it so, so just don’t feel bad, okay? It isn’t you fault, I’ll just, I’ll come up with something else.”

Tony hears her words and understands them, but it doesn’t stop him from continuing his descent through the air at speeds that he isn’t sure are safe for the suit at all .There’s no way he’s stopping. Not with Rhodey so close, yet so far away, and only in this position because of Tony. He’s vaguely aware of Falcon also making the daring dive to try and catch Rhodey, although the other man doesn’t know that he’s destined to fail as well.

Time seems to be moving too slow and too fast all at once. Or, more like Tony, Wilson, and the rest of the world are moving too slow and Rohdey is moving too fast for them to catch him. Tony can feel the sweat beading along his hairline and he’s biting into his bottom lip so hard he can taste the coppery, metallic sting of blood in his mouth. 

Even though he knows he’s not going to catch Rhodey, he can’t stop himself. Some part of him hopes that he’ll hit the ground along with his friend, and the two of them will fall together. And that would be so poetic, wouldn’t it? Falling alongside the man he rose with. Because Tony knew he wouldn’t be who he was or where he was now without Rhodey. The man held his hand through some seriously dark hours, told him he supported his decision to de-weaponize Stark Industries when the rest of the world was telling him what an idiot he was, let him show up drunk and crying on at his front door when Pepper left and he couldn't bear to be alone, and consistently reminded Tony that not every fuck-up in the universe was his fault.

Rhodey was one of the only people in his life that Tony knew wasn’t friends with him for the benefits. Because being friends with Tony certainly did _not_ benefit Rhodey in any way. 

It kept him up countless nights when Tony had a game-changing idea or a mental breakdown at 3:30 in the morning. It made him unpopular among his peers in the army. It got him dragged into life-threatening situations that he otherwise wouldn’t have been in, and Tony was willing to bet that he was the cause of more than a few of Rhodey’s greying hairs.

But despite all of these things, Rhodey was Tony’s best friend. He was the one that Tony called with big news, and Tony was the one Rhodey turned to for all of his movie recommendations. Rhodey was one of the only people in the world that Tony actually enjoyed and went of his way to waste time and do nothing important with, like order Chines takeout and watch crappy reality TV. Things that Tony would otherwise never let himself do, would convince himself was wasting time he could be spending in his workshop. But Rhodey made Tony feel normal, like the weight of the world wasn't pressing down on his shoulders every second of every given day. He made him feel not like an Avenger, or a billionaire, or the psychological disaster that was a shell of the man he used to be, but just like himself, as if that were good enough.

Rhodey’s suit went dark just as he passed out and the comms lost connection. Tony merely increased his speed and continued his dangerous spiral towards the ground.

“Scott? Scott Lang?” A timid but commandeering voice suddenly breaks his thoughts. He realizes with a start that it’s Madison. But he had no idea who she was talking to.

Out in the middle of the field, reflective panels catching the light and flashing dangerously, was Madison. Her hands were out in front of her, being held together by one of Barton’s hands, while in his other he held his own comm piece up to her ear, so that Madison was now effectively communicating with Steve’s team as well as their own. Members of Steve’s team began looking around in confusion before all of their eyes eventually found Madison. 

Tony realizes a bit delayed that she had surrendered herself to Hawkeye in exchange for him letting her use his comm piece to communicate with someone on his team. The Ant-Man, who Tony now assumed was Scott Lang turned towards Madison and Hawkeye with his head tilted to the side in curiosity.

“I know you don’t know me, and you have virtually no reason to trust me here,” Madison continues in a hurry when she sees she has his attention. “But I need you to do it Scott.” 

Tony has no idea what “it” is, but he can’t hear the other half of the conversation, just sees Scott gesturing wildly for a few moments before going eerily still when Madison says, “Trust me Scott, it’s going to work this time. And it’s the only way to save Lieutenant Rhodes.” There's a finality to her words that leave no room for argument, and Tony doesn't do a lot of praying these days (never really has), and he's not entirely sure how much faith he has yet in Madison and her skills and the _Ant-Man_ , but he's praying for a bunch of things he doesn't believe in anyways because this was Rhodey's life on the line and Tony would take any help he could get.

“Falcon,” she continues once Tony assumed Lang has agreed to her plan (and he kind of wants to kiss the man out of gratitude), “Get yourself the hell out of there.” He sees Wilson turn sharply upwards and out of the way, as Madison instructed.

The world seems to return to its normal speed as something amazing happens to Ant-Man and Tony is getting really sick of discovering new things he can’t explain, because right before everyone’s eyes, Scott grows, and grows, and grows until the guy is a freaking giant. 

“It worked!” Madison exclaims breathlessly. “Now go, catch Rhodey! You’ll make it!” She goes quiet for a second before adding, “Catch Iron Man, too. He intends on burying himself 6 feet under along with Rhodey and will be pretty successful if you don’t stop him.”

And okay, wow, there was really no need to share that with the class.

Before he can get too offended and worry about what the others thought when they heard what Madison said, he’s being scooped into a giant hand and tossed back into the air while another hand wraps carefully around Rhodey and carries him back over to the roof of the parking garage. 

And just like that, Rhodey is safe again. His heart is still beating and so is Tony’s and the revelation is almost too much for Tony to bear.

He remembers a bit too delayed the situation that Madison had put herself in to save Tony’s best friend.

There’s a harsh scream of “Peter!” in his ear and Tony looks over just in time to see one of Clint’s arrows bury itself into Spiderman’s left thigh. There’s a flurry of action as Natasha launches herself off of a nearby car and drives her feet into Clint’s chest, and the two of them continue to battle it out a few feet away. Now, having been freed from Clint’s grasp, Madison was running to Peter’s side, dropping down on her knees with her hands fluttering just above him, like she wants to do something to help but doesn’t know how.

“I’m so sorry,” she’s gasping over the comm system. “I was so worried about saving Rhodey that I, I didn’t even see this coming. I should have known you would try to save me, you idiot,” she’s scolding, but with no heat, only anxiousness behind her words.

Tony sort of feels like bashing both of them over the head. They had both directly gone against everything he had told them to do. Madison, putting herself into the line of fire, and Peter engaging in a battle he couldn’t win. It was so frustrating, but Tony knew it was only because he cared what happened to the little idiots. 

Tony is on his way over to take them both to the Quinjet and far, far away from all of this crap (and to a doctor, for Peter) when someone else beats him to them.

Steve looms above Madison and claps a large hand onto her shoulder. She freezes up and turns around slowly to face Captain America and his very pretty and very stern face. His blonde hair was darkened with sweat and sticking up in a messy, bedhead type of way and his pink lips were pressed into a tight line. His shield was perched on his back and he cast a giant shadow over the two younger people below him. 

Tony approached the group and opened his faceplate, fixing Steve with an unamused look, and trying not to let his eyes linger too long on the spot of blood at Steve’s hairline that slid down the side of his face and across his sharp jaw. For some reason, the trail of blood was attempting to take up way more of Tony’s attention capacity than he had to spare.

“Hands off my kids, Cap.”

Steve looks up at Tony with an equally unamused look, and Tony has to admit, it’s kind of impressive because Tony practically trademarked that look.

“Keyword, Tony: Kids. What the hell were you thinking dragging them into this?”

And yeah, okay, it’s not like Tony needed a _reminder_ of what a jackass he was for getting Peter and Madison involved. He got the message pretty loud and clear every time his eyes flickered down to Peter and caught sight of the blood beginning to pool beneath his leg, while Madison looked stricken beneath Steve’s grasp as if the entire thing were her fault.

"Okay for the record," Tony says jamming a finger in Madison's direction. "She is AT LEAST as old as Wanda."

Steve looks pointedly at Peter who is still curled up in a ball on the ground.

"Superpowers add ten years, everyone knows that,” Tony quips.

“Tony.” Tony thinks if he never has to hear Steve say his name with so much disappointment like that again, it’ll be too late. 

“Yeah, yeah, of course you’re right. Guess my battlefield etiquette is a little rusty.” Tony begins making his way over to Madison and Steve. “I’ll just go ahead and take them home now. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they fly first class and that there are absolutely no pointy edges in sight.”

Steve opens his mouth, probably to continue to argument, but he never gets the chance. 

The moment Tony claps his own hand over Madison’s other shoulder so that he and Steve are both holding onto her, something that Tony has only ever been able to describe as ‘otherworldly’ happens to Madison. As soon as he makes contact with her, she lets out a piercing, blood-curdling scream. Madison’s eyes turn blue the way they do whenever she’s looking into the future, but the blue doesn’t bleed slowly outward from within like they usually do. In an instant, Madison’s eyes are suddenly flooded completely blue. The power of it is so strong, that Tony can see under the skin in her face the blue currents all leading into her eyes. 

As if on instinct, Tony looked up at Steve to tell him what to do. It was as if years of taking orders from the man had hardwired his brain to look to him as the leader in every situation. The thought should have been unsettling, but it wasn’t nearly as unsettling as the look in Steve’s eyes when he met Tony’s own. 

Steve clearly had no fucking idea what to do.

By this point, every member of both teams had heard Madison’s ear-piercing shrieks and had made their way over to form a loose circle around the three of them. Clint and Natasha had arms thrown over each other’s shoulders, holding each other up and looking a little worse for wear. Barnes and Wilson had extracted Rhodey from the War Machine suit and they were both holding him up as he slowly regained consciousness. Wanda and Vision stood together, having apparently made amends, while T’challa had taken off his mask and was staring stonily over at Barnes and Lang just looked ridiculously confused.

Wanda took a step forward, eyes scanning Madison carefully before commanding, “Let go of her!” Tony and Steve both instantly removed their hands and it was like they had pushed the ‘off’ switch.

The electric blue drained out of her eyes as quickly as it had come, and her body that was tensed all over in what Tony could only assume was excruciating pain went limp with relief. 

Madison sat there in an eerie silence for a few more moments, breathing still harsh with brows furrowed in confusion, or maybe concentration. Slowly, and purposefully Madison looked up at Tony, then turned her head to look at Steve. Then back to Tony. Then back to Steve.

To say that the following minutes were incredibly uncomfortable would be an understatement.

It was already uncomfortable enough given that the group of people standing together had been engaged in battle, like, 30 seconds ago, but at least there had been the distraction of Madison’s screaming at first. Now there was just the silence, the unspoken apologies teasing at the tips of tongues, and the psychic kid looking at him and Steve like they were this complex puzzle that needed to be solved. Tony could relate to the feeling.

It was unsettling though, the intensity with which she was staring at them. Steve shifted the weight between his feet and ducked his head, before looking up at Tony expectantly. She was his responsibility, so he better start doing some responsible-ing, or whatever.

Tony decided he should probably ask her if she was okay and maybe _‘what the hell just happened?’_ , but his brain was essentially rendered useless when Madison spoke. It was gritty and painful sounding, but she choked out what she needed to say. Tony sort of wished she hadn’t.

“You two… the two of you are…?” She looked incredibly confused even as she said it, eyes flickering back and forth between Steve and Tony ceaselessly with her brows furrowed. She looked down at her lap and shook her head. “No, not yet. Too soon…” She murmured to herself.

Tony didn’t want to think about what that meant, but he couldn’t stop himself. He and Steve were _what_? Going to win the lottery? Going to get bad haircuts? _Going to kill each other?_ There were so many credible options that she could’ve finished that sentence with that Tony’s imagination was going haywire. 

There was one thing that hinted at an answer, though. The way she said it didn’t make it sound like something they were going to _do,_ it sounded like it was something they were going to _be._ Or, in Madison’s time-warped mind, something they already _were._ A noun, not a verb. 

And what did that last part mean? Whatever she had seen of them that had confused her wasn’t true yet, and she didn’t seem to want to ruin the surprise (or, probably more accurately, didn’t want to ruin the fabric of time by telling them something they shouldn’t know yet). As badly as Tony wanted to know what it was, he also didn’t exactly feel like messing with the future, which was incredibly infuriating to a genius like him. Having something he didn’t know staring him right in the face was kind of like his pet peeve, but multiplied by a thousand.

Steve’s eyes were narrowed as he probably went through the same thought process Tony was had. Knowing Steve, he had already come to the same conclusion as him; they couldn’t know whatever it was Madison almost told them.

But if she wanted to volunteer any other information, they were all ears…

“You can’t keep fighting like this.” Madison’s words are careful and loud, making sure everyone in the general vicinity heard her demand. “I saw it…the darkness… If the two of you,” Madison directs her look at Tony and Steve again. “Don’t work together, there will be nothing but darkness and chaos. The world will never be safe again, will never know peace or harmony. It will be destroyed, ripped up from the roots and turned upside down. I can promise you that I have seen many different possible futures, but the ones where the two of you are against each other always end in complete destruction.” Her face gets pinched for a second as she mulls something over in her head. “I think that’s why I had such an extreme reaction to being in contact with both of you at once. I see the future - well, really, I see many possible futures. But the fate of the world depends so much on the two of you, that I had no control over whether I saw it or not.”

Tony, as shell-shocked as he was, couldn’t fight the urge to immediately look to Steve upon hearing the news. Steve looked absolutely _floored_. Tony couldn’t blame him, it was kind of a lot to have the fact that the fate of the world rested in your hands dumped on you. And to make matters even worse for Steve, he had just learned that an equal amount of responsibility for the fate of the world rested with _him._ Tony. The last guy that anyone wanted to give any sort of responsibility to.

But Steve had the strangest look on his face when he caught Tony’s eye. He went from shock to Captain-America-facing-the-biggest-bully-in-the-schoolyard type determination in the blink of an eye. He looked at Tony like he really thought they could do it - they could protect the world from darkness and chaos, just the two of them, and Tony felt this overwhelming sense of guilt because there was a very good chance that he was going to ruin that little fantasy of Steve’s one way or another.

“The two of you aren’t meant to fight. You never would have if it weren’t for outside interference.”

“Outside interference? You mean that someone was trying to make us fight? Who would do that?” And now determined-Captain America was gone and angry-Captain America had taken his place. Tony had to agree with the sentiment. The past week had been a living hell for him, and the idea that it never would have happened if someone hadn’t orchestrated it pissed him the hell off. 

The idea that someone would turn him and Steve against each other at all was getting him to start seeing red.

Steve didn’t look much happier, was looking at Madison with hard eyes and a tick in his jaw that Tony knew only came out when he was really struggling to keep his temper in check. Tony always thought it was one of the most admirable things about Steve. With the serum pumping through his veins and all, his emotions were just as heightened as every other aspect of him, and restraining so much raw strength and power beneath the surface of an almost annoying calm and put-together man had to be no easy feat. 

But as Steve had explained to him once when he asked about it, he didn't trust himself to give into his emotions and let go because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to bring himself back. And what’s worse, he was afraid he would hurt someone. The idea always seemed laughable to Tony, that Steve could ever hurt someone he didn’t mean. 

The hesitance and vulnerability in Steve’s voice when he confessed this to Tony over the phone one night made it clear that the threat of himself was very real to Steve. It had been a routine call to make sure Tony had eaten dinner and was getting himself to bed before the sun rose, but something about the nighttime and the distance had made both men brave, and Steve was telling Tony about his fear of his own emotions as Tony cradled the phone to his cheek while he lay in bed, some of the scariest words of his life threatening to claw their way out of his throat in order to comfort and protect Steve. Words that he might have even possibly said out loud if he wasn’t the person that he was.

“The Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross,” Madison says miserably. “He’s been dead for 2 months.”

Her words are met with a deathly silence as the words sink in.

“Um, I’m sorry but how is that possible? I just saw him yesterday.” Tony asks, mind reeling.

“You saw a man who looks just like him, has been the entire time. He took his face, he can take the face of any man because he,” Madison is struggling at this point, squinting hard as if trying to conjure up the images from her peek into the future again, or like she’s trying to make sense of them. “He can take the face of any man because he doesn’t have one of his own. He only has-“

“A skull.” Steve’s grave voice cutting Madison off surprises Tony, but Madison just meets Steve’s eyes with a grim look of understanding.

“A red skull.” She finishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, these last few chapters were very action-packed! 
> 
> Next chapter will reveal some major plot points and introduce this terrifying concept of feelings... Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Tony have "The Talk", or rather, the first of many Talks

Steve has had nightmares like this before. 

They start innocently enough, with his mother handing him his lunchbag and ruffling his hair then sending him out the door. He walks to school with Bucky by his side, his best friend casting a shadow over him and the sun blocking out his face when Steve tries to look up at it, so the only way he really knows it’s Bucky is the faint echo of his familiar laughter. 

They approach the school and all of the girls throw themselves at Bucky. Steve starts to feel like everyone’s forgotten he’s there. The colors are muted.

The girls and Bucky walk faster than him, are so much bigger than him that he can’t match their strides or see their faces. Just when he’s about to give up hope trying to catch them, one by one the girls start to disappear, just like that. Only focusing on Steve now, Bucky turns back around and holds out his hand for Steve to take. He still can’t see his face.

That’s when everything starts to go wrong. 

The second he touches Bucky’s hand, his friend disappears in a cloud of smoke, much like the girls did before him. Steve grows frantic trying to find Bucky, screaming his name and running down endless school hallways that stretch on forever. His asthma starts acting up and he has to stop running to catch his breath, but he can’t find his inhaler, and all the colors start draining out of the walls. He looks down at his hands and find them to be a grayish hue. 

Then he hears the footsteps, heavy and steady, growing closer and closer. Standing at the end of the hallway is Schmidt, with his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. He still can’t see Bucky’s face. 

Schmidt asks Bucky what his name is.

“Winter Soldier.”

Steve screams as Schmidt rips off his face, revealing the red skull underneath. It’s the only color Steve can see, the blood red skull as he laughs and laughs and rips off Bucky’s face too, revealing another red skull underneath. Then his mother is there. She rips off her face and she’s the Red Skull, too. Erskine. The Red Skull. Peggy. The Red Skull. Natasha, Clint, Sam, Bruce, Thor, _Tony._ They’re all there and he’s so relieved for a moment because his team is there to back him up, but they’re all the Red Skull, too.

Then he wakes up and goes to Sam for counseling because that’s what Sam does, and Sam reassures him that the Red Skull is dead, that Steve defeated him, and that all of his friends were safe.

What was happening now wasn’t exactly the same thing, but the outcome was still the same. Schmidt, the Red Skull, was alive again and all the people he cared the most about were in danger.

Sam sat next to him on the Quinjet, never leaving his side even for a second, keeping a hand secure on Steve’s shoulder. Bucky is on his other side, but he’s too caught up in his own inner-turmoil to notice Steve’s. Steve is grateful for this, but still feels anxious just sitting still when Schmidt is out there.

Steve wonders how much longer it will be until they reach Malibu, but he can’t bring himself to ask Tony. Not with the way Tony had been looking at him ever since Madison’s mid-battle prophecy.

The second Madison told everyone that they couldn’t fight each other anymore, there was this collective sigh of relief, like they had all been waiting for someone to give that order all along. 

And then the Avengers sprang into action, working together like the well-oiled machine they were (on good days, at least). 

Madison pulled T’challa aside and told him that the man he was looking for was Zemo, that he was the one who killed his father, not Bucky. T’challa didn’t exactly apologize to Bucky, but Steve figured the way he managed to not claw his best friend’s throat out when he was close enough to do so was almost the same thing. He agreed to go to Siberia and take care of Zemo himself, exacting his revenge while also stopping him from releasing the other winter soldiers. He promised to call in if he encountered any problems, but Steve had a feeling that the Black Panther would be perfectly capable of handling it himself.

Next, Natasha expertly extracted the arrow from Spider-Man’s leg, and after a few minutes of writhing and complaining, the kid’s enhanced healing kicked in so that only a shallow, jagged cut remained. Clint apologized profusely, claiming that, shit man he didn’t know it was a freaking _kid_! and Peter had just laughed if off, told the man how “wicked cool” the whole experience was and that he was a big fan. Clint looked ridiculously pleased at that. 

Scott Lang had to get back home for his daughter Cassie’s clarinet recital and promised to drop Peter off at a hospital in Queens to get stitched up before he got himself back home in time to make curfew.

Before he left, Peter asked Madison for her number.

“Why, you need a babysitter?” She had immediately responded with a smirk.

“No? What-no! Just, like, what if there’s an emergency or something? Like, what if I go to a horse race and someone cons me into betting all my money and I need to know which horse is gonna win, or I-“

Madison scribbles her number on a scrap of paper and shoves it in Peter’s chest.

“Unless it’s an emergency, don’t even _think_ about using that until you’re twenty. One. _At least.”_  

Once they had all left, Madison shuffled her feet and glanced at Tony out of the corner of her eye.

“So… I guess this is the part where I should head out, too…”

Tony looks over at her with a carefully neutral expression. “Actually, I was thinking we could still use a little bit of that psychic juice. Really drain you for all you got, I wanna get my money’s worth. That is, if you wouldn’t mind sticking around a little longer.”

Madison’s blinding grin in response was answer enough.

The next order of business was finding a place to go. Ross (or Schmidt, or the Red Skull, or whoever) was waiting for them back at their training facility in New York at that very moment. Stark Tower was way too obvious of a place to look for them, and no one wanted to put Clint’s family in danger by staying at his farmhouse again (though he stayed uncharacteristically quiet throughout that particular discussion).

It was finally decided that they would be staying in Tony’s newly rebuilt house in Malibu. They had just finished construction on it, and considering the mess he had gotten himself into last time he made the house public knowledge, it was very well hidden away on a more remote part along the coast. No one outside of his inner circle even knew he was having it rebuilt.

So the 10 of them had squeezed themselves into the Quinjet and set a course for Malibu, California to regroup and come up with some kind of plan.

After what felt to Steve like an incredibly long flight, they were descending behind a wall of boulders and landing on the roof of Tony’s secluded second home (or were there more than two?). California was sunny and warm with a pleasant breeze, the water was crystalline blue. Steve barely noticed all of these things as he exited the Quinjet. 

Tony exited first, rolling his shoulders and stretching out the kinks in his neck before turning around and addressing the group of them, arms spread wide. “I welcome you all to the newest installation of my beach home. First level is the kitchen and the gym, out back there’s an obstacle course and a track, second floor is the theatre, the bar, and the ballroom. Third floor is the conference room, all the fancy computers and the meditation room. The entire fourth floor is reserved for guest suites so… go kill each other for the biggest room,” Tony waves a dismissive hand and they all go rushing past him to explore, shouting dibs on rooms with certain amenities and threatening each other in incredibly creative ways that Steve could never have come up with. “Don’t break my elevator!” He calls after them, with a heavy sigh.

Steve watches as Tony’s bravado fades for a moment and he scrubs a hand across his face. When he turns around and sees Steve still standing there, he straightens up again.

“Whatcha still doing here, Cap? Don’t you think that as their humble leader, you should get the biggest room? Or are you so sure of your authority that you think they’ll actually save the biggest room for you out of respect? Ooh, that would actually be a really good power-play…” 

Steve chuckles and shrugs one of his shoulders, “Shouldn’t you be getting the biggest room? I mean, it is your house, Tony.”

Tony waves a hand carelessly, “Not worried about it, my room is in the basement along with the workshop. I had them rebuild it that way, just seemed more…practical. Don’t you fret for me, it is definitely the biggest room in the house. I have a dual head shower, surround sound speaker system, fully stocked mini fridges galore, and 1020 thread count, 100% Egyptian cotton sheets. I’ll show it to ya sometime.” Tony’s eyes widen suddenly and he coughs into his hand. “I mean, everyone. I’ll show it to everyone. Anyone who wants to see my room is welcome to go and see it. In fact, I’ll be giving tours every Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 8 and 10-“

“Could I actually see that room now, Tony?” Steve cuts him off. Tony stops talking with his mouth hanging open still and Steve can tell he’s caught the other man off-guard and maybe even made him a bit uncomfortable, but he _needs_ to talk to Tony alone right now.

 

____________________________________________________

“-and yeah, that’s about it.” Tony finishes the tour of his enormous room and stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking at Steve as if he isn’t sure what he expects him to do next.

“I’m sorry, Tony.” Steve blurts out, feeling a weight dissipate off of his chest when he does.

“Sorry?” Tony repeats, brows furrowed as he turns as looks around the room. “For what? Did you spill Coke on the Persian rug? Because I can have Friday replace that within the hour.”

“No, Tony, I’m sorry for-“

“You do that a lot.” Tony walks through the door connecting his bedroom into the workshop and Steve follows after him obediently.

“Do what a lot?” 

“Say my name when you’re talking to me.”

“Oh,” Steve feels has face heat up when he thinks back on it and realizes that he does, in fact, say Tony’s name a lot in the middle of conversation. “I don’t mean to.”

“It’s okay, not a problem. A bit unnerving if I’m being honest, just don’t always expect it. People aren’t always so forward with me, or it’s like you think I forget you’re talking to me. Which, to be honest, I have been known to do, so maybe it’s good that you do it.” Tony is at one of his work tables now, and Steve isn’t an idiot. He realizes that Tony is avoiding the conversation that they _need_ to have.

“Tony,” he says firmly, waiting for the genius to look up from the circuit board he’s tinkering with and look him in the eyes.

“There it is again.”

Steve groans and runs a hand through his hair. “Be serious, just for a second, will ya? I’m trying to apologize for-“

“For what?” Tony asks heatedly, putting down the screwdriver he’s holding forcefully. “For trying to save your friend? For trying to stop a psychopath from releasing Hells Angels onto the world? Or for not calling me to help with any of it? Because honestly, if you say my invitation got lost in the mail I’ll throw this wrench at your-“

“No, Tony. For hurting you.” Steve cuts him off again, because sometimes that’s the only way to get a word in with Tony Stark. Tony’s eyes narrow suspiciously, but he drops the wrench he had picked up to threaten Steve with. “I’m sorry that I betrayed you.”

“You only did what you thought was right,” Tony sniffs, heading for one of his fully stocked mini fridges.

“So did you.” Steve points out.

“Yeah but that’s…different.” Tony rummages around in a cabinet before finding a glass and dropping a few ice cubes in it.

“How?” Steve frowns. Tony laughs, this harsh bitter sound and pours a generous helping of scotch into his glass.

“I was wrong.” 

“What are you talking about?”

“The Accords weren’t even real!” Tony slams the scotch bottle onto the counter takes a deep breath to calm himself. “I turned against you for some pretty words on fancy paper that were specifically designed to tear us apart and it worked.”

“That isn’t your fault,” Steve assured, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms across his chest. “And you weren’t the only one who believed the Accords would be a good thing.”

Tony takes another big drink at that and begins refilling his glass again. “I can’t believe they weren’t real,” he mutters. Steve can see the disappointment in his eyes as they slip shut and he tosses his head back to take another drink. He wishes he could say he understood why Tony was so upset over the Accords, but he had no idea.

“You know, I’m not even supposed to be alive.” Steve’s eyes widen and he pushes himself off the doorframe and walks further into the room.

“What are you talking about?”

“I shouldn’t be alive right now,” Tony repeats casually. “I should’ve died, like, a dozen times already, but for some reason, I didn’t. And for some reason, good people who deserved to live a lot more than I did, _did_ die, and I’m still trying to figure out why. I keep trying to do good and give my life some meaning - a friend suggested I do that a long time ago - but I just mess up and more people who _aren’t_ me keep ending up dead.”

Steve isn’t sure how to respond to all of this, just keeps watching with his heart in his stomach as Tony paces around the room, talking to Steve in the brutally honest and open way that he’s only done before over the phone and at night. It’s different in person though, having to watch the grief and the guilt play across Tony’s features, his expressive brown eyes hiding nothing when he lets his guard down. It makes the room feel like all the air has been sucked out of it.

“That’s why I wanted to sign the Accords. I figured it wouldn’t be as bad if all the responsibility wasn’t on me, that maybe if the decision-making power was in someone else’s hands, they would make the right ones. I thought maybe someone else could use my powers in a better way than I could, they could just tell me what to do and I’d do it. And then, if things didn’t go right and people ended up dead, the guilt wouldn’t be so crushing because it wouldn’t be _all my fault_ anymore, someone else would be to blame for my actions. And I know, that makes me sound like such a coward, not taking responsibility for my own actions, but if-“

“Tony, please,” Steve begs him to stop, his voice thick. Tony snaps his mouth shut and frowns down at his feet before finally looking up and meeting Steve’s eyes. There’s something pleading and desperate in them. Steve motions for Tony to stop pacing and join him on the couch. Tony sits in the armchair across from the couch instead. “We’re not soldiers.”

Tony’s head snaps up from where he’s staring into his scotch when he hears Steve repeat his own words from one of their first meetings back to him.

“You were the first person to tell me that - that I wasn’t a soldier anymore.” Steve admits and Tony scrunches his face up in this way that makes him look so much younger. “At first, I didn’t want to believe you, because if I wasn’t a soldier, I didn’t know what I was. If I wasn’t taking someone else’s orders, I was lost. You had basically just told me that everything I was created to do, I couldn’t do anymore. And so I watched you to try and figure out what it’s like to _not_ be a soldier, to fight as whatever _you_ were. And watching you, I learned the difference pretty quickly.” Tony was staring at him intently now, eyes blinking rapidly, scotch all but forgotten on the table beside him. “A soldier fights for what other people believe in, but a hero fights for what _he_ believes in. Or she,” he adds quickly, just in case Natasha is hiding around the corner (which was actually fairly likely).

“I taught you that?” Tony repeats, face scrunched up adorably in disbelief again. Steve smiles softly.

“You did. And ever since that day, you’ve never let me down. The Accords were just another example of that.”

“The Accords weren’t real,” Tony protests weakly.

“But your belief in them was.” Tony’s eyes widen slightly and Steve continues, “I understand why you wanted to sign the Accords, I know you thought it was the right thing to do to protect people, but I just couldn’t stomach the thought of us becoming someone else’s soldiers - of _you_ becoming a soldier.”

Tony leans back in his seat and studies Steve for a moment, scrutinizing every aspect of him, but it doesn’t bother Steve. Tony can look all he wants, but he won’t find anything other than the fact that Steve is telling the complete truth. “Well then,” he says, clearing his throat. “I guess it’s a good thing that practically everything in those documents is null and void, considering that they were written by a dead Nazi.” He gets one of those intense pensive looks on his face. “Speaking of, why _isn’t_ he still dead?”

Steve groans and snatches up Tony’s glass of scotch, downing the contents in one long pull. The serum running through his blood made it practically like he was drinking water, but he enjoyed the burning sensation in the back of his throat. Tony’s watching him with amusement and bit of curiosity, lips twitching into a smirk and eyebrows raised.

“I have no fucking idea.” At that, Tony actually lets out a loud peal of laughter and Steve lets himself smile back, feeling even more of the weight on his chest dissipate. 

Tony fixes him with a serious look when he’s finished laughing. “Whatever it is, we’re gonna figure it out. And then we’re gonna send that son of a bitch back where he belongs.” 

Steve feels almost weightless for the first time in years. His fingers itch to reach out and hug Tony, just to _touch_ him and feel how real he is and know that they’re going to do this together. But before he can, Rhodey comes bursting into the workshop, desperately trying to hide his panting and forcefully trying to act casual.

“Hey Tones, hey Cap. Uh, just got a quick question for ya. That super fancy, Willy Wonka looking elevator of yours?” Tony nods his head.

“I know the one. It’s the newest technology, elevator of the future, blah blah blah.” Tony narrows his eyes at Rhodey and tilts his head to the side. “Why?”

“How’s that thing work?”

“In simple terms, it has magnets pulling it instead of cables.”

“Ah. Well that makes sense.”

“Why? What did you do to my elevator?”

Rhodey turns on his heels and begins casually walking out the door. “Oh, nothing,” he calls over his shoulder. “Barnes’ arm is just stuck to it.”

Tony bolts up from his seat, chasing after Rhodey who had broken into a run while yelling “Sam, it’s run by magnets! We’re gonna have to remove the arm!” Steve hears Bucky’s wails of dissent and Tony’s demanding that no limbs are removed in his elevator, just give him a minute to shut it down, you ingrates. Rhodey responds that no one should worry he has performed an amputation before, and would Sam please grab him a small hand axe from Tony’s garage? 

The whole thing is so ridiculous that Steve can’t stop himself from rolling around on the couch, gasping with laughter in a way that he hadn’t done since coming out of the ice - probably even since before he got the serum. 

In the middle of his worst nightmare coming true, Steve feels oddly content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This had to have been my favorite scene to write so far (especially the part at the end lol)
> 
> Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers are stuck in the Malibu house waiting for info on HYDRA, left with nothing but each other and their thoughts.

Tony isn’t stupid. In fact, most people would say he’s really very smart. A genius, if you will. So when Steve forgives him for everything he did, he’s not foolish enough to believe that he deserves it. In fact, it starts to make him think that maybe _Steve_ is stupid.

No, not stupid. Steve isn’t stupid. Steve is just kind - kind, and caring, and compassionate, and perfect. Too fucking perfect, in all honesty. He was too good of a person to give Tony what he really deserved. Tony feels like he’s taking advantage of him — he can do whatever shitty things his subconscious tells him is a good idea to do, treat Steve however he wants, and Steve will still forgive him because he’s too nice not to.

Not only forgive him, but go so far as to do _excessively nice things for him_. 

With no real idea of what HYDRA’s plan was, let alone their next move, there wasn’t a lot that the team could do for now other than wait around for news. Madison, to give her the credit she deserves, was working hard every day. 

She struggled to remember most things that she saw in her vision of the Red Skull that day and wasn’t really sure what to look for in the future since she hardly knew who Schmidt was or the other members of HYDRA working with him. Wanda had volunteered to work with her on it, being the closest person to understanding what went on in the other girl’s head. They were in the meditation room every day, usually breaking only for meals (sometimes not even then). Tony noticed the bags under her eyes and the way her hands sometimes shook, but she seemed so content that Tony couldn’t really bring himself to feel too bad about it. 

She seemed determined and like she was where she belonged, doing something she believed in. Tony could relate. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same thing, but when he was down in his workshop for hours on end, running on nothing but coffee and fumes, exhausted to his bones, he was _happy._ He was doing something that made a difference. He had a _purpose._ He thinks maybe that’s how Madison feels when she’s in that meditation room, working with Wanda and sorting through the future in her mind.

So, while they were waiting for something to come across the wire or Madison to find something out, the team was just laying low in Malibu. They trained every day, of course, and Tony spent most of his time down in his workshop, but somehow Steve always managed to find him. 

Whether is was at 2 in the morning to remind him he should get some sleep, or at 4 in the afternoon to bring him what he claimed was just an “extra” cup of coffee (conveniently not made with cream or sugar the way Steve liked it, but exactly how Tony likes it — black), the two of them started falling into the old rhythm they had picked up months ago — God, was it almost a year now? 

The one where Steve took care of him. The one where Steve looked after him and noticed things about him that no one else did. The one where Steve was such a good person it tore Tony apart inside because he didn't deserve it. ~~(The one where Tony guiltily found himself falling for Steve.)~~

What was Tony supposed to do? It wasn’t like he was just going to push Steve away, the other man didn’t deserve to be treated like that just because Tony hated himself. And no matter how much Tony felt bad about it, and like he didn’t deserve Steve, he didn’t _want_ to push him away. He liked ~~Steve~~ being Steve’s friend. 

He wasn’t as smart as Tony (most people weren’t — his heart ((and brain)) ached for Bruce some days), but Steve could hold his own and understand a good amount of what Tony went on about. He was easy to talk to, always seemed interested in what Tony had to say, and filled silences with stories or insightful things he’s noticed. Steve is bright, and clever, and witty. He’s funny in a way that most people don’t get, but Tony finds unnervingly appealing. Even when he just pops into the workshop for twenty minutes to drop off a sandwich or a coffee, it’s enough to warm Tony’s insides and leave him with a smile on his face for the next hour or so. 

It’s terrifying. But Tony can’t push him away.

Tony isn’t stupid. He knows what’s happening. He knows how he feels. And he knows that Steve deserves so much better.

 

____________________________________________

 

James Buchanan Barnes has seen a lot of things in his lifetime — lifetimes? Granted, most of it he doesn’t remember, it was wiped straight from his memory. But lately, a lot of the faint outlines of his memories have been returning to him. Without the constant electro-shock treatment that HYDRA had been giving him, things had been coming back to him. In bits and pieces, never very clear and sometimes not comprehensible at all, but they were there, blurry and dreamlike, as if they had happened to someone else.

Sometimes the memories that came back were good ones — carnival rides with Steve, his first kiss with Dolores MacGhee when he was 13, the way his father’s aftershave smelled and his mother’s favorite section in the newspaper. But most of the time, the memories were more like nightmares. People screaming and crying, all the blood, and his own voice - hard and cold - saying things he didn’t recognize. He tried not to dwell on those memories as much. HYDRA had already left him with enough memories of the people he killed to last him a dozen more lifetimes.

But out of all the things he had seen in his life, Bucky (is that who he still was?) had never seen anything like Tony Stark. Not even Howard had come anywhere close to ever-changing tide of confusing that was his son. 

He hated Tony. At first, that is. Tony could be irritable, pretentious, and argumentative. He always thought he was right. He was stubborn and reckless and Bucky wanted to throttle him on more than one occasion. Not to mention the fact that he was going to throw Bucky in a psych ward for life instead of jail, as if that made him some kind of saint or something.

He drank when he didn’t need to and he didn’t think people noticed. He let his stress drive him mad some days, and it could make him cruel. He didn’t think enough about other people. He didn’t care enough about himself.

Bucky saw all of the bad in Tony Stark.

That is, until Steve made him see the good. Not on purpose or anything, it was just hard not to notice.

Bucky didn’t remember everything about Steve, but he was still there, in his memories. It was like Bucky didn’t really know him, but had read about him in a book or something. Or maybe a friend had told him all about Steve. He wished he knew more about Steve — he wished he was the guy in his memories who was best friends with him. He wished he knew what that had felt like. But HYDRA had stolen that from him, so all he knew of Steve these days was what he did manage to remember from the past, and the man he saw standing in front of him today. 

There was no doubt in his mind that Steve Rogers was one of the best men to ever live. So when he noticed how much Steve cared about Tony, Bucky started to notice the good in the arrogant genius.

Steve was an excellent judge of character, Bucky was sure about that, so there must have been _something_ redeemable about Tony Stark. 

Turns out, there were quite a few things, Bucky just wasn’t looking for them.

Tony noticed things about people. He probably didn’t think of it as taking care of people, only accommodating them, but he wanted to make sure people were comfortable and happy. Clint’s favorite cereal started magically showing up in the pantry, along with Natasha’s favorite candy bars to satisfy her cravings (that no one except Tony noticed), and there was always a stock of plums on hand. A lot of their rooms were specially altered to meet specific needs or preferences. Some of the rooms were designed for certain people before they even moved in.

Tony was intimidatingly clever, but wasn’t usually using his genius just to show off, he was using it to help the others. When he was down there tinkering in his workshop, he seldom worked on actual Iron Man suits. There was hundreds of high-tech arrows, War Machine upgrades, additions for Steve’s suit, and even a few things for the Spider kid that Bucky noticed him working especially meticulously on. He made sure that his team and the people he cared about were as well protected as possible. 

Tony was surprisingly soft, at times. Sometimes he curled up against Clint on the couch and rested his head on the other man’s shoulder, or pressed sloppy kisses to Rhodey’s cheeks. Sometimes he let Natasha run her fingers through his hair and gently work the knots out of it when he first woke up and hadn’t brushed it yet, humming happily and sipping at his first coffee of many. When Madison looked especially worn out some days, he pat her head fondly and offered quiet murmurs of encouragement. He told her he was proud of her. Bucky had a hard time imagining Howard (from what he could remember) ever saying that to anyone. 

But Tony really shone when he was around Steve. No matter how many times it happened, Tony was always so wide-eyed and surprised when he came up from his workshop for find that Steve had already made a plate for him. The tips of his ears always turned pink as he thanked Steve. He was grateful when people looked out for him. 

When Steve asked him about things he was working on, Tony would absolutely light up and launch into a detailed description that no one in the room ever followed, but Steve just nodded along with a bright grin. Tony’s eyes shone when he talked about his inventions.

When Tony got angry, Steve would put a gentle hand on his arm and the impending storm would calm. Tony stopped getting angry as much. Tony was funny and witty when he wasn’t angry. Bucky hadn’t noticed that before Steve’s effect on Tony starting calming him down.

Sometimes, Tony was sad. Tony was sad in this bone-deep way that could never be changed. Bucky knew what that was like. It was a weight Tony would always carry with him. Some days were better, some days were worse. Some days it was like Tony had never known sadness before in his life, and some days it was like he had never known anything but. Steve was always especially present on the bad days. The two of them would stay locked in Tony’s workshop all day, but Steve always made Tony come out and be with the team for dinner. Tony smiled on his worst days because of Steve.

Even though it had mostly been from afar, Bucky felt like he was starting to grow familiar with Tony Stark, which is how he finally got up the nerve to enter the genius’ workshop one afternoon (through the door and announced, instead of watching from the shadows).

From the outside of the glass door, Bucky could hear Friday announce his arrival to Tony. Tony looked up from his work, surprised, and moved the goggles from his eyes onto his forehead. “Yeah, yeah let him in Friday.” Bucky walked in and Tony looked up and smiled, but he seemed a bit nervous. Bucky couldn’t blame him, the two men actually talked to each other very rarely.

“James, er, Bu—Barnes,” Tony finally settles on. He shakes his head with a small smile. “Nope, I’m sorry, I just, I’m not exactly sure what to call you.” Bucky thinks about it for a second, but ultimately, he doesn’t really feel like he’s Bucky anymore. Not to anyone but Steve, at least.

“James is fine.”

Tony looks relieved. “Right, James then, what can I do for you?” Bucky doesn’t miss the way his eyes excitedly dart between Bucky’s face and his metal arm. Bucky snorts and holds out his hand in front of his face, clenching and unclenching in a fist.

“I was wondering if you could-“

“Yes, yes, absolutely yes,” Tony blurts out, cutting him off. And just like that, Tony is right in his space, has taken his metal arm in his hands and is just running his fingers reverently over the panels. “Oh, sorry,” he looks up after a few moments, looking like he had forgotten Bucky was even there. “What was it that you actually wanted me to do?” Bucky chuckles and offers his metal hand out to Tony.

“It’s uh, it’s not really some big revelation in science or whatever you seem to be hoping it is. It’s just, just that I,” Bucky’s face scrunches up in concentration. “I used to play the piano, I think. Or if I didn’t, it’s a shame, because I know how to really well. I mean, I think I know how to. I haven’t actually tried it yet. I don’t know if I can anymore.” Bucky feels stupid when the words leave his mouth, but Tony just nods his head in understanding and works the joints of his fingers in his hands.

“The artificial metacarpals weren’t given enough flexibility.” Tony declares. Bucky just looks at him. “Your fingers can’t stretch apart from each other enough to play the piano.” He clarifies.

“Oh,” Bucky frowns down at his hand. “Is there any way that you could-“ Bucky doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Tony’s hand is around his wrist and he’s already tugging him over to a work station.

“My God, I thought you’d never ask,” he laughs happily, chattering on about all these big ideas he has for upgrading Bucky’s arm, adding certain features, maybe weaponizing it, almost like the arm of his Iron Man suit. Or, he could install a tiny computer, a watch, a GPS, _an MP3 player_. Tony’s starting to ramble and get carried away, but he must start to notice Bucky’s growing resistance because he adds, “Of course, we’ll just start with the metacarpals today.” 

Tony grabs a stool for Bucky to sit on, and he sits on another one next time him at the table with Bucky’s hand splayed out in front of them. Tony’s hands are deft and gentle as they probe the joints, precise and steady as he begins working at them with various tools Bucky doesn’t know the name or the purpose of. But Tony is an expert at what he does, and Bucky trusts him more than he thought he ever would. 

While Tony is focused on his hand, he watches the way a stray curl of dark hair falls in his face and he pokes his tongue between his teeth in concentration. Bucky has never seen him look quite so human. He’s never seen him so close up. He irrationally trusts him and opens his mouth.

“It’s…odd,” he bites out, feeling stupid again. Tony doesn’t look up from his work, just hums for Bucky to continue. “It’s like, I can remember how to play the piano. I can remember every note of every song I’ve ever learned. But I can’t remember my mother’s name.” At this Tony does pause in his work and looks up at Bucky with a troubled expression, like he doesn't want to let his sympathy show and make Bucky feel bad, but he can’t help it.

“It must be hard. I can’t even imagine… The things they put you through…” Tony shakes his head and frowns, looking away from Bucky and going back to work on his hand. “It’s not fair that they took that from you.”

“Yeah.” Bucky says, because really, what else is there to say? Tony keeps working, his mouth twitching and twisting. He looks to be deep in thought.

“There — I mean, I don’t want to get your hopes up here, okay? But there’s this idea I had,” Tony says after a few minutes of silence.

“An idea?”

“To get your memories back, or at least jog some of them,” Tony clarifies. “I would need Bruce’s help with it, he is the bio-chem genius in our pair…”

Bruce. Doctor Bruce Banner, Bucky’s mind supplies. The Hulk. He’s heard Natasha cry about him on her balcony at night when she didn’t know he was on the roof. He thinks “that stubborn bastard, Bruce” is lucky that people miss him when he’s gone. He’s heard murmurs of the name around the mansion many times. Bruce should come back, Bucky thinks. Why wouldn’t he? People want him here.

“It’s not a definite thing, just a hypothesis I had,” Tony continues. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, your problem and how to fix it, and I’m pretty sure if I can recreate the stimulation to your hippocampus that HYDRA applied, but reverse the…” Bucky zones out at this part. Honestly, Bucky barely hears anything beyond ‘ _I’ve been thinking about it for a while, your problem’_.

Tony. Tony Stark who he hated so much and thought so little of, has been thinking of trying to help him from the start. This man, who he had barely spoken more than twenty words to in their entire time together, had been wracking his brain, making calculations and plans, was trying to save his memories. 

And he barely even knew him. Tony didn’t know anything about him, beyond what Steve had probably told him. Tony didn’t owe him anything. Tony didn’t have to spend his energy thinking of ways to fix him. _But he did._

“So yeah, I mean it’s not perfect yet, but I have a few prototypes banged out and that should about do it for the metacarpal problem— _ooph._ ” Tony lets out a surprised breath as Bucky drags him into a painful hug. He freezes up for a brief second before relaxing and awkwardly patting Bucky on the back.

“Thank you,” Bucky grits out, willing himself to keep his emotions in check.

“You’re welcome,” Tony responds and it sounds like he’s smiling. “Like I said,” Tony says when they pull apart. “It’s not a definite thing, but if one day if you ever, y’know, feel like you’re ready, we can work on it.” Tony offers. 

The door to the workshop opens without any warning from Friday. Bucky realizes the person walking in doesn’t require Friday to check with Tony before letting them in - they’ve been granted unlimited access to Tony’s workshop, which means it could only be one of two people (and Bucky knew Rhodey was out on the track, so it could really only be one person).

“Hope you’re okay with PB&J today because Clint ate all of the ham and - oh,” Steve stops short when he walks in and sees Bucky, two plates with sandwiches on them in his hands. “Heya, Buck,” he greets with a weird smile on his face.

“Oh yes, lunchtime! Come to daddy,” Tony greets Steve with a toothy smile and plucks one of the plates out of his hand. Steve rolls his eyes fondly.

“Sorry Buck, I would’ve brought you one, too if I knew-“ 

“Ah, don’t worry about it, Stevie. Was just having a little touch-up done,” Bucky says, wiggling his (now, more flexible) fingers in the air.

“James was an excellent patient. He would have earned a lollipop…if I had any,” Tony declares. Steve tilts his head to the side.

“James, huh? Hope you don’t expect me to start calling you that,” he teases, knocking his shoulder gently into Bucky’s. 

Bucky can’t imagine not being Bucky anymore, as long as Steve exists. Steve is the reason Bucky exists.

“Nah, never you. I’ll always be your Bucky.” Bucky throws an arm around Steve’s shoulders and tugs him close. Steve protests weakly, but Bucky can see the emotion shining in his eyes. Tony is watching them with a strange look on his face.

“Well, I better get going. Promised Wilson a sparring session this afternoon,” Bucky says, releasing Steve and starting to back out of the room. “Thanks for the check-up, Doc,” he waves his fingers at Tony who laughs and gives him a silly mock-salute.

When Bucky reaches the door to the workshop and turns back around, Steve has taken the stool next to Tony with their plates of sandwiches on the table in front of them. Tony has already launched into some kind of story that required large hand gestures and Steve is grabbing at his chest and laughing loudly. Tony was leaning towards Steve, and Steve was leaning towards him, too, their heads ducked together, only broken apart when one of them threw their heads back to laugh.

Bucky could just be imagining things, or maybe it was just the lighting, but it looked to him as if they were glowing. He couldn’t help the fond smile that took over his face, seeing the two of them look so happy.

That night, when he returned to his room after dinner, Bucky found a shiny new piano sitting in the corner of his room.

_________________________________________________________________

 

Clint didn’t think with his brain a lot. No wait, that came out wrong. Clint tended to think more with his heart than his brain. Yeah, that sounds more accurate.

Stay in an orphanage with food, and water, and shelter, and wait to get adopted, OR run away with his brother and join the circus? What the hell, might as well try his hand at being a carny (the good news was, he ended up being pretty fuckin’ good at archery, even got himself a nice little nickname. Spoiler Alert: the name Hawkeye ends up stickin’ for a while).

Team up with his mentor in said circus, help steal from the company and ensure that he and his brother don’t have to worry about money or eat out of the dumpster anymore, OR turn against them both because he knows stealing is wrong? Yeah, should probably just do the Right Thing and make the only flesh and blood he has left hate his guts and make the guy who trained him try to kill him (ultimately, this is what got him on SHIELD’s radar. Spoiler Alert: the whole “Agent” thing sticks, too).

Kill known KGB member and dangerous assassin and spy, Natalia Romanova, and complete his mission, OR go against everything he’s been told and spare her, try and save her? The smart decision here was clearly _not_ to trust the assassin. But he does so, anyways (she ends up being his best friend in the world, even saves _his_ life in return on multiple occasions. Spoiler Alert: Natasha ends up stickin’, too).

Join a team of enormous natural disasters just waiting to happen? Eh, why not? Maybe Tony Stark ( _Tony Stark, what the fuck is his life?)_ will let him swim in his pool sometime. Fight aliens and robots with a bow and arrow? Sure, it feels right. Trust a witch who tried to fuck with his friends’ minds? Wanda seems like a nice girl. 

Stay in retirement, make his wife and his kids happy, be safe and a part of their lives, OR take Steve’s call.

Take Steve’s call and go back to the life he had sworn off, go back to fighting off aliens with a bow and arrow and _winning._ Back to looking into Wanda’s sad eyes and knowing Pietro — _fuck,_ Pietro — was dead because of him, but knowing that Wanda trusted him and cared about him more than anyone else, regardless. Go back to Natasha staying up all night drinking with him because they both had demons they’d never talk about, but they didn’t have to. Knowing she always had his back and that they’d give their lives for each other. Back to bantering and causing mayhem with Tony, a man he used to only know as a corrupt celebrity and never imagined would become one of his best friends. Back to following the leadership of one of the greatest men he had ever met, a legend, a true hero — Steve.

Leave his family.

Go back to his family.

Family.

Family.

Clint didn’t know how to choose between them, they were both his family, but ultimately, he chose what his heart told him to do, and when Steve called and asked for his help, he jumped back into the fray with relish.

Laura hadn’t been quite as pleased. In fact, Laura had told him never to come back. His kids had cried and Laura had cried and he had apologized, but he left.

The Avengers, SHIELD, Nat, they were things he had known his entire life, things he was comfortable with. He wasn’t sure if his life with Laura and his kids was something he had ever really wanted, or just convinced himself he wanted.

He loved them, oh God, he fuckin’ loved them so much and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt them. He was so, so sorry. Some days, he was happy with the Avengers, but some days he just wanted to go home.

Clint’s heart and brain were at war for the first time in his life. He didn’t know which one would stick.

After being cooped up in Malibu for about two weeks with no word on HYDRA or the Red Skull, and nothing to do but think and drink and train, he finally drove himself insane thinking about his family — his _other_ family. So he sought out the only person he knew could give him some peace of mind.

His knuckles rapped gently, three times on the door in front of him. The door to the meditation room opened just a crack and Wanda’s brunette head poked out, large brown eyes lighting up when she sees him. 

“Clint! Hi, what is it you need?” Clint can smell the incense and hear the gentle trickle of — was that a waterfall? Did Tony build them a goddamn indoor waterfall? Figures…

“Hey Wanda,” he laughs nervously. “Yeah, I was just, well I was just wondering if Madison was busy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jeez, sorry for all the POVs! We got a nice, deep look into Tony, Bucky and Clint today... Clint wasn't supposed to be in the end there at first, but he has an exciting few chapters coming up so I thought I'd add a nice little lead-in here ;)
> 
> ALSO Bucky playing the piano was inspired by watching Sebastian Stan's character play it in the show Political Animals, so pop on over there and check it out of you want
> 
> Thanks for reading, I'd be honored and delighted if you wanted to drop me a comment and let me know what you're thinking in those lovely brains of yours!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madison does a favor for Clint.

Madison loved the meditation room. It was quiet, peaceful, and dimly lit. Usually only herself and Wanda (and sometimes Vision) were in the room, making it easier for Madison to relax and concentrate. Not that she had anything against the other Avengers, she actually liked them all a lot. They were friendly and welcoming and treated her like she was a part of their dysfunctional family right away.

She figured they felt like they owed her for stopping their two leaders from killing each other.

But regardless of how great the team was, she found it a lot easier to let her guard down and relax when it was only herself and Wanda. The other girl, who was roughly the same age as her and sometimes seemed to understand what was going on in her own head better than she did, had become a close friend of Madison’s. Wanda was kind and gentle, her voice was soothing and her actions were careful and smooth.

She helped Madison with her meditation. Madison helped her not feel so foreign.

One afternoon while Madison is in a deep meditative state, sifting carefully through activity in the Middle East two Tuesdays from now, she distantly feels cool, slender fingers wrap gently around her wrists. 

“Madison?” 

That’s Wanda. Madison knows that’s Wanda because Wanda is the only one who knows to carefully take her out of her trance the way that she does. Slowly, Madison loses sight of the blistering sun and the endless expanses of sand and finds herself instead looking into wide, brown eyes.

“There you go,” Wanda murmurs encouragingly. It was getting harder for Madison; the deeper into meditation she fell and the further she tried to look for something completely random and unidentified, the more control she lost. It was giving her migraines, trouble sleeping. It was harder to pull herself back to reality than it used to be when she was looking into the future in her own controlled way.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Wanda says in that low, calming voice of hers. “But Clint was wondering if he could talk to you? Only if you are feeling up to it, of course.”

Madison stands up and stretches out her sore joints, figuring getting out of the room and distracting herself with something else for a little while couldn’t hurt. “Yeah, sure. I can do that, no problem.” 

Wanda smiles at her and nods towards the door, implying that Clint was on the other side. Madison grabbed a sweatshirt on her way out and pulled it on over her sports bra, tugging up the zipper as she slid out the door. 

Clint was pacing the hallway when she walked out, but stopped and looked up when he saw her. He flashed a charming grin, but there was something apprehensive in his eyes. Madison grinned back, found it easy.

Clint was one of the friendliest people on the team. He had an easy charm and a quick wit and a _terrible_ sense of humor that was nearly impossible not to laugh at. He poked fun at other people, but at himself, too. When the team had first moved into the mansion, Madison tried to remain on the outskirts, felt like an intruder in their home. She planned to just stick with meditating, do what they had her there to do, and try to stay out of the way otherwise.

Clint clearly had other plans.

From the first day they met, Clint had been dragging her into headlocks and shooting paper airplanes at the back of her head when she wasn’t looking. It was childish, but it was light and easy. He made fun of her the same way he did everyone else, didn’t give her any special treatment because she was new. He was entirely impossible not to like - like the big brother she never had (or particularly wanted, but loved regardless).

“Madison, hey!” Clint rubs at the back of his head. “I’m real sorry to distract you from your, uh, witchy voodoo, or whatever it is you do in there.” Madison fixed him with an unimpressed look. “But I,” Clint’s shoulders suddenly sagged. “I really need a favor,” he admits.

“Sure, Clint.” Madison can’t help the apprehension pooling in the pit of her stomach. It was extremely unlike Clint to appear so vulnerable and unsure.

“Great!” Clint responds, maybe a bit too fast. His eyes shift around the corridor. “Could we maybe, uh, do this in my suite? It’s kind of, well, it’s kind of personal.” Clint tries for a charming grin again, but it comes off as more of a grimace. Madison just nods her head, concern growing.

“Well, uh, okay I’ll lead the way I guess,” Clint claps her on the shoulder and steers her towards the elevator. Madison notices that his hands palms are sweaty, and when she gets closer, she can also see the rings around his eyes. She frowns and Clint just stuffs his hands in his pockets, not looking directly at her anymore.

Once in his suite, Clint leads her to a small couch set up in front of a TV and a gaming console that Madison has no doubt Tony had installed specifically for him. Clint takes a deep breath, like he’s about to say something monumental, and then doesn’t talk for a long while.

“Clint,” Madison says quietly. “Is everything alright?” Clint sighs heavily and hangs his head, shaking it slowly.

“No, not - not really.” Madison stays quiet this time, waiting for Clint to elaborate. He takes a shaky breath. “I was in retirement before all this Accords bullshit started. I was retired from the superhero business, I wasn’t an Avenger, I wasn’t an agent with SHIELD - I was just a farmer with a house and a bangin’ wife and a few rugrats runnin’ around and it was, y’know it was good. No one was tryin’ to kill me or blow me up, and no one was expectin’ me to save the world every goddamned day. It was…nice.”

“But…now you’re back?” Madison says slowly, tilting her head to the side.

“Yeah,” he breathes out. “Now I’m back. Because ‘nice’ was gettin’ old real fast. I love my family, I do, and I loved spending time with them, but when Cap called I - I guess I just couldn’t resist gettin’ back in the game, y’know? I promised them that I wouldn’t but I just couldn’t - I need this, this life I have here. But I need them, too… And when I left, Laura told me,” Clint draws in a deep breath. “Laura told me not to come back. That I had let them all down and she, she didn’t want me to come back.”

“I’m sorry, Clint.”

“Yeah so I, I was just wondering if maybe you could look for me - look into my future, I mean, and see if she ever takes me back. Just check for me if I ever get them back, or if I should just…let them go.”

Oh. Well that makes a lot of sense. Madison can feel the beginnings of a migraine already prickling at her temples from her earlier meditation, but the look on Clint’s face is so sad and hopeful that she can’t bring herself to say no. Besides, this would basically be routine for her. A nice easy exercise to keep her skills sharp without pushing her to her limit.

Madison smiles reassuringly and lets her hands hover over Clint’s forearm. “Do you mind? It’s easier for me if I make contact.”

“Yeah, yeah of course! Anything you need!” Clint grins blindingly but then it turns into something smaller, softer. “Thank you,” he adds in a low voice.

“Anything for you, bird brain,” Madison teases. Then, slowly, she begins lowering her hands onto Clint’s arm. Before she finally touches him, she looks up with questioning eyes. Being told your future…it wasn’t easy sometimes and she needed to make sure he definitely wanted to go through with this. Clint just gives an affirmative nod of his head.

Madison lays her hands on Clint’s arm. Her vision goes blue, and then Clint’s life is flashing before her eyes. Vaguely, at what seems like a great distance, she can still see Clint, too, sitting across from her in real life, his strong arm a solid anchor for her to reality and his future.

“Okay Clint,” she murmurs, her voice sounding detached and far away to her own ears. “I might say some things that I see out loud just in case I forget them so you can remind me.” Clint nods his head.

Madison dives forward, images and scenes flashing before her eyes. She picks out the ones she thinks will be relevant to Clint’s problem.

_There’s Clint - he’s in a small rustic house with a view out the window of miles and miles of green pasture. He’s yelling and crying. There’s a beautiful woman standing across from him (Laura, Madison thinks) - she’s crying and yelling too._

_“I don’t deserve a husband who can’t keep his word to me, and my children don’t deserve a father who’s never there for them!”_

_“OUR. OUR children.”_

_The beautiful woman laughs, a harsh grating sounds. “Hardly.”_

_There’s a young girl crouched behind the kitchen counter hiding behind the legs of an older boy who stands above her and cradles a baby close to chest._

_“Shhh, it’s okay Nathan, everything is okay buddy,” the boy whispers. But he’s crying, too._

_“You promised!” Laura shouts. Clint shouts something back and then it’s just too messy and jumbled and loud to follow, the two of them yelling over each other and neither one backing down._

_Clint slams something heavy on the table and everyone jumps. The baby starts wailing and Laura starts shoving at Clint’s chest, demanding he leave. Clint holds his ground and Laura begins punching him, desperate and fiery._

_Clint just stares down at her as he beats on her chest. He looks at his children, crying and cowering in fear. His eyes widen in horror as more hot tears spill down his cheeks._

_“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, impossible to hear over Laura’s screaming and baby Nathan’s wailing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I did this to you all.”_

“I’m sorry,” Madison whispers to Clint. He doesn’t respond and she doesn’t elaborate on whether she’s giving him a phrase to remember or is actually apologizing to him. She doesn’t think it really makes a difference. She swallows hard as a myriad of sorrow and grief beginning spinning around her in rapid succession. She doesn’t want to keep watching this, but Clint deserves to know more than what she’s just seen.

_This time Clint is at the Avengers Tower in New York City (so, the Avengers will get to go home one day after all?). He’s alone, out on the roof. It’s dark, not too cold, but the wind is howling. The sky is pitch black and you can hear the honking and yelling and bustle of the city below._

_There’s a bottle of whiskey clutched in one of his hands. He’s swaying dangerously on his feet as he paces in a manic circle, dragging his free hand through his hair and tearing at it, making it stand up in funny places. His face is screwed up tight, and his mouth is moving quickly but he doesn’t say a word._

_“Oh, Clint,” a woman breathes, sounding relieved and pained all at once. Natasha. That’s Natasha. She moves carefully towards him, prying the bottle out of his hand and tossing it to the ground behind her, coppery liquid spilling out of it._

_“Tha’ shi’s espensive. Stark’s gonna be,” Clint burps. “Stark’s gonna be pissed - pissed tha’ you threw it,” Clint slurs._

_“I’m sure Tony can afford the loss,” Natasha replies cooly._

_“Sure ‘e can, Stark’s the man.”_

_“Please don’t let him hear you say that.” Clint barks out a laugh and stumbles backwards away from Natasha. She begins to reach out for him, eyes darting wildly between his uncoordinated steps and the edge of the roof, but stops herself with a jerky movement, probably afraid that if she startled Clint he would do something rash._

_“What are you doing up here, Clint?” Natasha’s body is a forced kind of relaxed, but her muscles are tense, ready to jump and stop him from doing something stupid._

_“Wha’s it look like ‘m doing?” Clint stumbles around in a random patter, arms swinging around carelessly. His eyes are red, like he had been crying for hours._

_“Honestly? It looks like you’re trying to do something really stupid.”_

_Clint laughs at that. He laughs and laughs and laughs and falls down on the ground. Natasha flinches towards him again, but visibly stops herself from grabbing him._

_“That’s - oh, Nat - that, that’s rich,” he gasps out between giggles._

_“I don’t see what’s funny about this.”_

_“I lost ‘em, Nat. Get that? Gone. M’fam’ly,” he hiccups. “Gone.” Natasha frowns at him._

_“That doesn’t mean there aren’t still people who need you.” Clint looks up at her from where he’s splayed out on the ground. Natasha walks over and gingerly sits down next to him. “You still have a family,” she reminds him softly._

_Clint’s face screws up painfully and then he breaks. He sobs heavily and Natasha gathers him in her arms, his head buried in her chest as she peppers kisses in his hair. She rocks him gently as he shakes in her arms._

_“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” she sniffs, tears streaming steadily down her face, too._

_“‘m sorry, Nat,” he sobs. She just shushes him and holds him close._

After that, things don’t get better very quickly. There are months of darkness and alcohol and Clint being alone. Madison plows through until she starts to see the beginning flickers of light. She snags a piece of it and focuses in.

_“Miserable old man, why will you not just let me do this?” That man isn’t Clint. He’s taller, leaner, with a shock of white hair and a heavy accent._

_“I told you kid, it’s too dangerous. Christ, what’s it gonna take to get you to listen to me one of these days?”_

_The accented man crosses his arms with a petulant look on his face. “I can do it,” he insists._

_Clint takes a step closer. “No.”_

_The other man takes a step closer, too, chin raised in defiance. “Just say it.”_

_Clint raises an eyebrow in confusion. “Say what?”_

_“Say that you do not trust me!” The other man jabs a finger into Clint’s chest. It’s not a hard push, but the force of the words knocks Clint back a step._

_“Don’t trust - God, no! That’s not it!” Clint runs a frustrated hand through his hair and turns away slightly. The other man gets back in his face._

_“Then what? What is it? Why will you not let me-?”_

_“Because I don’t want you getting hurt!” Clint exclaims, spinning around and grabbing the other man tightly by the upper arms. There’s a tense silence, filled by both of their heavy breathing. The man with the white hair’s face softens. He grabs Clint’s wrists and clasps their hands together between their bodies. He goes to say something, but then Steve’s voice is shouting commands to them through their ear pieces. The man gives Clint an apologetic look._

_“I can do this. I’ll come back for you.” He fixes Clint with a deep, intense stare before disappearing in the blink of an eye._

_No, not disappear. He runs. Fast._

“Fast,” Madison gasps out to Clint, hardly believing what she’s seeing. Clint tenses for a second beneath her touch, but still remains silent.

The man is there a lot, now. He’s a constant fixture in Clint’s future - even more so than the rest of the team, who take up a lot of their own space in his life. 

Madison chooses a scene that she probably shouldn’t have (for privacy reasons).

_Clint is laying in his bed, shirtless and sweaty. He’s gasping and groaning and - is he in pain? No, no he’s… oh._

_There are hands traveling up Clint’s bare torso, long fingers tracing every contour of his body. They are unmistakably the hands of a man. A head follows along after the roaming hands, trailing kisses and a few playful bites._

_There’s a shock of white hair._

_“We should,” Clint gasps out. “We have training and - oh, fuck - Steve will be mad if we - fuck!”_

_The man looks up from Clint’s collarbone where his face is buried and gives Clint a wicked grin. “Steve will be mad if we fuck? Uh oh, who is going to tell him?” Clint chuckles and lets his head fall back on the pillows. The man scoots up the bed and lays alongside of him, head resting on Clint’s chest as his hand traces lazy patterns up and down Clint’s toned body. Clint shivers but doesn’t make him stop._

_They lay there like that for a few minutes, breathing syncing up as Clint goes soft and pliant beneath the other man’s clever and insistent fingers. It’s mid-morning, a soft glow from the sun outside peeking through the curtains and falling over their naked bodies. The light traces of the other man’s fingers turn into slow, purposeful strokes, drifting further and further down Clint’s body. They lay still, breathing together._

_“Clint,” the man mumbles, looking up at Clint with hazy eyes._

_“Hm?”_

_“I think we should skip training today.”_

_“You are a terrible influence on me,” Clint declares, before wrapping his arms around the other man and flipping him so that he’s laying on the bed and Clint is hovering above him. The man lets out a surprised laugh and looks up at Clint adoringly, fingers trailing across his cheek._

_“You love it,” he whispers. Clint smirks down at the man and leans his head further down, down, down, until their lips are only a breath apart…_

Madison quickly pulls out, feeling like she’d be invading Clint’s privacy if she kept watching any longer. It was nice, though, to see Clint so light and happy again. After suffering uselessly for so long, this man with his crazy hair and his inhuman speed and his lilting accent would make Clint happy again. 

There were hundred of them - scenes like that. Clint and the man, in each other’s arms or just enjoying each other’s company. Sometimes they were in battle, bruised and bloodied and hanging onto each other, and sometimes they were in their pajamas, curled up together in bed watching a movie and throwing popcorn for the other person to catch in their mouth. Sometimes they argued - very rarely did they leave each other’s side when they were angry. They were mostly happy, they smiled and laughed and touched each other. 

Clint and this man - they were drawn to each other, pushed and pulled each other like the moon and the tides.

Madison stopped again when she caught sight of a familiar farmhouse.

_Clint stands in the same place he had been standing the last time he was in this house. Laura stands across from him, with shorter hair now, but still beautiful. She doesn’t look angry anymore when she looks at Clint, she looks sad and happy all at once. The baby - Nathan - is in her arms. Clint places a kiss on Laura’s cheek and then, after a brief pause, places one on baby Nathan’s head._

_The two children - the boy and the girl - run down the stairs and throw themselves into his arms. They’re crying again. Clint is crying now, too. He promises to come visit as often as Laura will let him. He says he will always be their daddy._

_Then, Clint is hoisting two big suitcases off the ground and heading out the door. He pauses briefly as he’s making his way towards his car, but he doesn’t turn back around._

_When he approaches the car, the man with the white hair is there waiting for him. In the blink of an eye, he has collected Clint’s suitcases and stashed them in the trunk, just a blur of silver as he moved. Clint’s now empty arms hung at his side, but they weren’t empty for long. The other man pulls Clint close to him and Clint relaxes into his hold, arms sliding around his waist._

_“I am so sorry, you are so brave, Clint,” the man is whispering into his hair. Clint closes his eyes and a watery smile spreads across his face._

_“Thank you,” he chokes out, and there’s so much meaning behind those two words, it’s palpable. The man pulls back and looks into Clint’s eyes with that same adoring look he had in the bedroom._

_“Let’s go home now, love.”_

“Home,” Madison tells Clint, and this time she knows she’s smiling as she says it. Clint fidgets, clearly wanting to ask questions, but he obediently stays quiet.

Madison feels the migraine pulsing behind her eyes, but she refuses to come out of her trance until she finds out who the man with the white hair is. It’s harder to find him and his future than it is to look into Clint’s since a) she had no idea who he is, and b) she’s actually _touching_ Clint, which made everything that much easier on her.

She couldn’t quit, though. Not with so much pain and suffering of Clint’s on the line. If she could figure out who this man was, maybe he could come in earlier and help Clint - make him _happy_. Stop him from drinking and crying. Madison bites down on her lips until she tastes blood. She hears Clint make a concerned sound but she pushes on.

_It’s white. So bright - so much white and bright lights and people in lab coats. The man with the white hair is strapped to a table with a gag in his mouth. He’s shaking violently._

_Not even shaking, more like vibrating. He’s vibrating in place and his body is desperate, so fucking desperate to just move, to go and run and release all of that pent up energy. But he can’t. He’s strapped down, he’s stuck, he’s shaking so violently._

_The man strains against his restraints, screaming against the gag, and twisting and shaking. It’s a terrible sight and he’s making the most wretched, despaired sounds. The people walking by don’t even look twice at him._

_Finally, one man in a coat walks right up to him. The doctor checks some numbers on the machines that the man is attached to. He makes a clucking sound with his mouth._

_“Not doing so hot today, are we? Keep it up like this and I’m honestly not sure how much longer you’ll last.” The man’s eyes go wide and desperate and his body is twitching and shaking and his joints are throbbing._

_The doctor walks around to the other side of the table and grab’s the man’s face, forcing him to look at the doctor. “It’s so easy to make all of this stop. You know it is. Just cooperate, work with us, and you can run around the world a thousand times if you want to.” The man whines desperately at the very thought of it. The doctor chuckles darkly. “So,” he says, reaching to remove the gag. “What’ll it be today?”_

_The man stares into the doctor’s eyes. “Go fuck yourself,” and then he spits right in the doctor’s face. The doctor’s face twists up into a horrible, angry expression before he forces himself to calm down. He wipes his face with his sleeve and places the gag back in the man’s mouth._

_“Fine, makes no difference to me. See if I shed a tear when you die in here, alone, in pain, and knowing that you wasted your second chance at life.” The doctor starts to walk away… Madison strains so hard to see what’s written on his clipboard that she knows she must be screaming in real life… but she needs to… she needs to know who that man is… That man that makes Clint happy…_

“Maximoff!” Madison screams when she finally focuses hard enough to read the doctor’s clipboard, the name torn from her throat as she tears herself from her trance. Coming out of it is hard, her vision is spotty and everything she hears seems to be coming through water.

“-dison? Madison? Hey, come on, stay with me here,” Clint is shaking her shoulders and looking at her with a worried expression.

“Clint,” she croaks out. Clint’s face floods with relief.

“Yes, fuck, yeah it’s me. Shit, you were really losing it at the end there. Is that, is that screaming normal?”

Madison shakes her head vehemently, “No, no not normal… I was just focusing, I was just,” Madison breaks off and her head snaps up. “Maximoff.”

“Yeah, uh, you mentioned that,” Clint’s brows furrow. “What does Wanda have to do with Laura and my kids?”

“No, no,” Madison is shaking her head again. “Not Wanda.” Madison bites her lip and looks Clint directly in the eye.

“Pietro.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We now interrupt your regularly scheduled Stony for a brief intermission of... *drumroll please*
> 
> HAWKSILVER!!! yay :-)
> 
> Obviously, if you read the relationship tags you already saw this one coming, but I hope the lead up was enjoyable nonetheless
> 
> Hawksilver is a side pairing (Stony is still the main - obvi) but like I said, brief intermission to get the ball rolling on these guys (since Pietro has kinda been dead before this point in the story)
> 
> Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!
> 
> OH. p.s. I am really sorry if you're subscribed to this story and you get an alert every time I edit the chapter to fix a typo I've found... sorry 'bout that!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint is losing his fucking mind

On a co-op mission to Bangladesh in 2009, Clint was captured by a terrorist organization smuggling black market weapons to rebels in West Bengal. 

Before the rescue team arrived to extract him, Clint survived the jolt of a 15 milliamp volt of electricity; he lost control of his muscles for hours and couldn’t talk again for days, but he survived it. 

They say that your mind can’t actually remember the feeling of pain, but Clint felt like he could still imagine the exact feeling of the electricity coursing through his bloodstream.

That feeling of shock didn’t even come close to what he was feeling right now.

Madison quickly pulls her hands away from Clint’s arm, eyes wide with urgency and mouth still slightly parted from the last word she said - that one, stupid, ridiculous word that had Clint’s mind in a tailspin.

“I’m sorry, did you just say…?”

“Pietro.” Madison repeats nodding her head frantically. “Pietro Maximoff, we need to help him.” Clint squeezes his eyes shut and rubs them with the heels of his hands, not ready to reopen this old wound yet - or _ever,_ really.

“I’m afraid it’s a little late for that. Pietro,” Clint swallows past a lump in his throat. “Pietro died.” He finishes with an air of finality. Madison’s eyes narrow and she shakes her head slowly.

“No, no that’s not - Pietro’s _alive_ , Clint, and I think, I think HYDRA might have him, and-“ Madison freezes dead in her tracks. “Your second chance at life,” she whispers, but the words don’t sound like her own.

Clint turns away from her, head swimming as he processes.

‘Pietro’ and ‘alive’ were not two words he expected to ever hear together in a sentence again. Unless it was something like, “Oh, yeah remember that one time we whooped Ultron’s ass back when Pietro was alive? Good times, good times.”

But, no, it couldn’t be that simple. Of course it couldn’t be. 

It had to be Pietro - the man who threw himself in the line of fire to save Clint’s life - back from the dead. _Risen from the dead._ What the _fuck_? Clint still had nightmares. The guilt, the flashbacks, the pain - all of it. He still remembered Pietro and his death like it was yesterday. 

To Clint, it was like Pietro had been alive the entire time. So why was he finding it so hard to breathe right now?

This was way worse than Bangladesh.

“Madison, Madison,” Clint grabs her wrists, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Calm down, okay. Clearly you’re very confused here.”

“No, no, no. ‘Your second chance at life’,” Madison says again. “That’s what the doctor said to Pietro! They must have… They must have brought him back.” Madison spring out of her seat and makes a beeline for the elevator. “I have to tell the Captain! We have to save him!” She calls over his shoulder, before jamming her finger into the buttons repeatedly until the doors start closing on her.

“Madison, wait-“ Clint begins to start going after, before realizing it’s a lost cause and flopping back onto the couch instead. “What about my family?” He grumbles to himself, subconsciously tracing his fingers over the scars on the inside of his forearm. 

It was silly to get his hopes up over something like this. It had to be some kind of fluke, didn’t it? While Madison was poking around in Clint’s head, she must have just stumbled across some memories of Pietro. (He _did_ think about the kid often enough for her to probably notice. He had “survivor’s guilt”, as his therapist at SHIELD told him.)

But… Madison saw the future. Could she see the past, too? She must be able to… There’s no way that Pietro could have been in the future… _His_ future.

That was the strangest part.

Clint had asked Madison to look into his future with his _family -_ with the people he _loved._ How the hell did she find Pietro in there? It wasn’t like Madison to goof off and get distracted easily. Usually if someone asked her a question she gave them a very direct answer. So why, when Clint asked her about _his_ future and _his_ loved ones did she suddenly decide to start spouting shit about Pietro being -

Oh. Fuck. No, no, no, no, _no_. No fucking way.

Well _that_ definitely didn’t make any sense - that made less sense than Pietro being alive at all! That Clint - to imply that Clint, that he and Pietro, that they were -

Clint needed a drink. Or five.

That was impossible. Clint and Pietro barely even tolerated each other when the kid was alive, how could they… How could they end up…

Clint’s mind refused to even think about it.

Clint didn't even like _men_ , let alone Pietro’s annoying ass. (Don’t - do NOT think about Pietro’s ass anymore, idiot.) ((Objectively speaking, it was a pretty nice - ok, yup, that’s enough.))

I mean, sure, Clint had thought about another man once or twice, but who didn’t do that? That didn’t make him gay! Everyone did that, it was totally normal! 

…wasn’t it?

Oh shit.

Okay, Clint, just breathe. You don’t even know what Madison saw. Maybe Pietro was in your future because you execute a flawless, kickass move to save him and the Avengers throw you a party and the President gives you a key to the White House. Or maybe, you both go in on a sound business investment together and end up making billions of dollars. (Or maybe you and Pietro fall in lo- nope. Not into guys. Not into _that_ guy.)

There was really only one way to find out the truth.

Clint scrambled off the couch and ran towards the stairs, the elevator being too slow for the occasion.

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

By the time Clint arrived at the conference room on Level 3 of Stark’s ridiculously big mansion, the rest of the team was already there. 

Sitting around the large table in the middle of the room were Bucky, Sam, and Rhodey. Crowded around a large computer panel at the far side of the room were Nat, Madison, Steve, and Tony. Natasha was in the chair sitting down, typing furiously at the keys (she was probably hacking shit). Madison stood nervously over her shoulder with Steve and Tony over the other, shooting each other serious looks every so often. 

Clint figured they were thinking about what kind of shit HYDRA could get up to with the power to bring people back from the dead. Probably some bad shit.

Wanda stood a few feet away from the group at the computer with her hand clutched tightly around Vision’s elbow. Clint wasn’t sure if the crushing grip was strong enough to hurt Vision, but if it was, he was taking it like a champ.

Nat huffs impatiently and tosses a look over her shoulder at Madison. “Okay, I’ve hacked HYDRA’s main database, but I really won’t be able to do much more until you give me something to look for.”

“Failsafe,” Madison responds instantly.

“Failsafe?” Steve repeats, sharing another one of those Serious Looks with Tony.

“Yeah, it’s - well, I don’t actually know what it is, but it’s what was written at the top of the doctor’s clipboard in the vision where I saw Pietro.” Natasha nods her head and begins furiously typing away at the keyboard again, bypassing security checks and firewalls. A blinking box with the word KEYWORD: in it pops up. Clint shuffles closer in anticipation as Nat types in FAILSAFE.

The results are instantaneous. The screen fills with codes and symbols that Nat begins scrolling through. Most of it goes right over Clint’s head, but Nat was always good at understanding difficult tech stuff.

“Looks like Failsafe is an initiative in effect at seventeen HYDRA locations,” Nat interprets the information for everyone in the room. Madison’s smile is blinding, while all of the color drains out of Wanda’s face.

“Great, so we just storm the seventeen facilities, find the one where they’re hiding Speedy, and burn all the others to the ground.”

“Not that easy, Tony,” Steve shakes his head. Tony quirks an eyebrow.

“And why not? I happen to like that plan, it’s a very simple plan - destructive and productive. My two favorite things.”

“I could get on board with that plan,” Sam agrees, Bucky nodding behind him. Steve shakes his head again and narrows his eyes at Tony. Luckily, Natasha picks that moment to add her own input.

“Steve is right.” Tony lets out a loud groan and Steve tilts his chin a little higher with a pleased grin. “Seventeen facilities is a lot to take down, especially since HYDRA isn’t even supposed to know we’re onto them yet. Once we attack the first one, they’re all going to know that we know what they’re up to. We only have one shot at this - we have to find the one that Pietro’s in first. If,” Natasha sends an apologetic look at Madison. “If Pietro is even in one of them.” Madison frowns and crosses her arms.

“He is.” She insists. “And he’s being tortured - he’s in pain! He needs us.” Wanda’s grip on Vision’s arm tightens (which Clint didn’t actually think was possible) and he’s afraid she might be sick at any moment now.

“If Pietro is really back, we need find the facility he’s in. He was one of us - for however short of a time it was. We owe him, we aren’t leaving him behind, no matter what it takes,” Steve declares.

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Rhodey chimes in.

“I could pinpoint his location if I just had something to go off of…” Nat muses, forehead creasing in the way it always does when she’s problem solving. “A heat signature, a sample of his blood, a, a-“

“A lock of his hair?” Clint suggests. Nat just stares at him for a second.

“Do you…have a lock of his hair?” Nat asks him slowly and carefully. Everyone slowly turns to look at him, with varying degrees of ‘ _what the fuck, dude?’_ written on their faces.

“What? No - what? Well, I mean, I kind of do.” Clint looks pointedly over at Wanda. Everyone follows his gaze and suddenly they’re all staring at Wanda now. Her eyes go wide like a deer in headlights.

“Genetics,” Nat murmurs to herself. “Brilliant,” she looks up at Clint with a smirk, which he gladly reciprocates. “Hey, Tony,” Nat turns to the man. “If I use a strand of Wanda’s hair, could this machine of yours-?” 

Tony cuts her off with a scoff, rounding the table to punch a few buttons and open a panel on the dashboard that was glowing bright red. “Can my machine scan and locate a target based on only removed genetic material?” He mocks, as if the very insinuation that it _couldn’t_ do something like that was completely and utterly ridiculous. Nat rolls her eyes and Tony beckons Wanda towards him. She walks on shaky legs, arms hugged around herself.

“Okay,” Tony gently rests a hand on her shoulder. “All I need is for you to place a single strand of your hair right onto that glowing red scanner,” Tony points over at the panel he had just opened up. Wanda nods her head and lets out a breath. She runs clumsy fingers through her hair until a strand comes loose in her hand.

No one even breathes as she places it on the scanner.

“Alright,” Natasha hums, back to work on the keyboard. “If this works-“

“It’ll work,” Tony brags. Steve nudges him in the ribs with his elbow and Tony pouts.

“If it works,” Nat continues, “I should be able to pinpoint the location of Pietro instantaneously. If it doesn’t work, then Pietro…” She looks between Madison and Wanda. “If the machine doesn’t return any results, Pietro isn’t in any of the facilities. He probably…he probably isn’t anywhere at all.”

Madison looks over at Wanda with a somber expression which Wanda returns. Clint takes a deep breath as Nat’s finger hovers over the Enter button.

Showtime.

Natasha pushes the button and time seems to slow down. Like how if you’ve just taken a pregnancy test, two minutes feels like 15? This was a hundred times worse than that. (Not that Clint would know because he’s never been pregnant, but he’s sat with Laura through enough to have a good idea and - oh. Right. Laura. Ouch.)

After what feels like a lifetime of nothing, there’s a small ‘ping’ from the computer. 

It’s almost anticlimactic, really. But it’s there, and it’s enough.

“Oh my God,” Wanda’s voice comes muffled from behind her hands as she lets herself fall completely against Vision. He wraps a sturdy arm around her and Wanda looks up, searches out Clint’s eyes across the room, and looks him right in the eye as the tears begin to fall down her face.

Clint feels like someone’s just punched him in the face, or dunked him in freezing cold water. It doesn’t feel real as everyone in the room lets out a collective cheer - even those on the team who never even knew Pietro. Madison is smiling so hard, Clint thinks her face might shatter and even Nat is looking at the screen and smiling while shaking her head like she can’t believe it.

Clint can relate. As all of this is going on around him, he feels detached from it in a weird sort of way - like he’s watching a movie of the event instead of actually being a part of it. Wanda’s eyes, resolutely locked on his as she cried, is the only thing keeping him grounded.

He can’t believe it.

The kid is alive.

After months and months of grieving and guilt, nightmares and benders, flashbacks of his fucking _face… You didn’t see that coming? You didn’t see that coming? You didn’t see that coming?_

He was back. And Clint _definitely_ did not see that one coming. He always thought to himself, he just wanted a chance to say one more thing to Pietro. To thank him, or apologize, or tell him he was a hero.

But now that he was actually going to get that chance, what would he actually say?

Nat waves her hand to get everyone’s attention and the talking quiets down. Wanda doesn’t look away from Clint, so he doesn’t look away from her.

“It looks like Pietro is being held at the base in Dietrich, Idaho,” Nat announces. Tony peers over her shoulder at the screen and his eyes nearly bug out of his head.

“ _Population: 339?!”_ He reads of the screen with a comical expression of shock on his face. “That’s, what, no way? How is that even a place? That’s like my entire cleaning crew starting their own city!” 

Nat shrugs her shoulders. “It’s clearly very remote. HYDRA likes remote.”

“That’s for fucking sure…”

“Language, Tony,” Steve comments, but it doesn’t sound the way it used to. It’s no longer sharp and commanding, it’s more lazy and off-handed, like he just can’t help himself from saying it. Clint watches the way Tony smiles dazzlingly in response to being told what to do instead of sneering the way he used to. Clint watches them carefully (because Clint watches fucking everything - it’s his job).

“Does this mean we’re going to,” Bucky scrunches up his nose. “ _Idaho?”_ Clint almost bursts out laughing. Idaho is basically a potato-wasteland of despair in the present day, he can’t even _imagine_ what Bucky remembers Idaho being.

“Yes, Buck,” Steve has a small grin twitching at his lips, so Clint figures he probably knows exactly what Bucky is picturing. “We are going to Idaho. And we are going to save Pietro,” he says with all the confidence of a super-soldier going into a battle he doesn’t think he can possibly lose. There’s a finality to his words and a strong set to his jaw that makes not believing him pretty damn hard to do. Clint admires it. (From the look on Tony’s face as he looks up at Steve, he admires it, too. Huh.)

Wanda suddenly pulls away from Vision at Steve’s words and wraps herself around Madison. The other girl goes stiff, shocked by the embrace.

“Thank you,” Wanda is crying, arms tightening around Madison. Madison’s shocked expression melts into something softer as she grows accustomed to the other girl’s embrace.

“You’re welcome,” Madison smiles, arms finally coming up to wrap around Wanda in return.

Steve and Tony are still across the room, heads bowed together and talking in low voices. Clint can’t hear what they’re saying but Steve looks troubled and concerned. Tony just looks, well, like Tony - aloof, and thoughtful. They complement each other well, Clint thinks. 

“Let’s just worry about Pietro now, and Failsafe later, hm?” Clint hears Tony suggest when they begin talking at a normal volume again. 

Steve nods slowly in agreement, then looks up at Madison and asks, “How _did_ you find him?”

Clint’s blood runs cold. 

Madison freezes up, too, looking over at Clint with a panicked look in her eyes. When she sees the expression on his face, she quickly schools her own into something more neutral. “Just, y’know, been meditating really hard. With Wanda!” She adds quickly, as a burst of inspiration hits her. “Yeah! I’ve been working so hard with Wanda, that something, something must’ve um rubbed off on me from her. So, yeah, that’s probably how I found him.” She finished proudly. 

Steve looks at Tony, who shrugs and quirks his lips into a crooked smile. Steve nods and whatever silent conversation they just had was _totally_ lost on Clint, but the good news was that they bought the bullshit that Madison fed them and they didn’t find out that - find out what? What was Clint trying to hide?

Clint turns around just in time to see Madison slipping out the door. Oh no, she’s not getting away so quickly this time. Clint needs _answers_ , goddamnit, and he needs them now (for the sake of his mental health).

__________________________________________________________________

 

“Madison,” Clint slams a hand against the wall in front of the girl, his arm blocking her from getting any further. Madison stops short and looks up at Clint with concerned eyes.

“Clint, I-“

“No, nope, I don’t wanna hear any bullshit excuses. I want - no, I _need_ to know, Madison.” Clint lets his arm fall to his side. “What did you see?” he pleads. 

Looking back on it, he’s still not sure what it was that gave him away. The desperation? The fear? The confusion? What was it about him that afternoon, standing in that hallway, that let Madison see right through him.

“You already know.” Her eyes go wide as saucers, shinning a bit in excitement. “You do, don’t you?” She jumps a bit in excitement, reading all the response she needed in Clint’s panicked and conflicted expression. “I knew it! The moment you found out that Pietro Maximoff was alive, your fate was sealed. And you could feel it,” Madison grins and grabs at his arm. “Couldn’t you?”

Clint shakes her off and takes a step back. “No, this is all wrong, this - this isn’t what I asked you!” Madison pouts and crosses her arms defiantly.

“You asked me to look at your future-“

“For Laura and my kids! Did you even look for them?” Clint accuses.

He knows it’s not fair to take this out on Madison. He’s scared and confused and she was only trying to help but he just can’t stop himself.

“I did.” She responds carefully, expression guarded.

“And?”

“You should probably start preparing your goodbyes.” Clint feels like he’s just been smacked in the face. Madison’s expression is firm, but her eyes are sad when she looks at him. Clint just glares back at her.

“Thanks a lot, kid,” he growls, turning on his heels and starting down the hallway in the opposite direction. 

Fuck, this wasn’t her fault. It was his own damn fault for trying to mess with something he shouldn’t have gotten involved in. The _future_ , Clint? Come on man, nothing ever goes right in sci-fi movies when people learn their fates! They go on epic quests, and then they get the girl (guy, in his case? Fuck.), and then they die. Along the way, they either mess up the space-time continuum, prevent someone they love from being born, or prevent _themselves_ from being born (sometimes all three at once).

Clint just needs a few rounds with the punching bag, or maybe to go through the obstacle course. Maybe he just needs a drink. Or five.

Fuck.

“Clint,” Madison is following after him. Clint just takes longer strides and she jogs to catch up. “Clint, just listen to me!” She pleads. Clint wheels around on her, catching her off guard so that she stops short and trips over her own feet for a second. He feels a pang of guilt, but shakes it off.

“I said that’s enough. You’ve done _enough_ , Madison.”

“I can fix this,” her eyes fill with tears.

“Don’t.” Clint turns around and starts stalking away again, pretending he can’t hear Madison’s quiet sniffling behind him.

Fuck, he needs a drink and to never hear the name ‘Pietro Maximoff’ again. 

Yeah, fat chance of that happening.

And…what was so wrong with Pietro Maximoff, anyways? 

Clint begins getting defensive at _himself_ for the way he’s reacting to all of this. Yeah, Pietro was a pain in the ass, overactive two year-old in a grown man’s body. 

But he saved him.

Clint sinks down into the corned of the elevator and pulls his knees to his chest, burying his head in his hands.

“Agent Barton?” Clint nearly jumps out of his skin as Tony’s AI speaks to him.

“Uh, wha- yes, Friday?”

“You have failed to input a destination into the elevator. Shall I take you to your floor?”

“No,” Clint sighs heavily. “Not - no. Can we, can I just sit here for a minute?”

“My protocols will allow it.” Friday confirms. Clint drops his head in his hands again and offers a muffled ‘thanks’.

This whole ‘future’ and ‘fate’ shit was really starting to get on his nerves.

When he finally tells Friday where he wants to go, he takes the elevator to the gym and trains for the next three hours straight. 

When he walks into his room, towel around his neck wiping sweat from his face, he finds a folded piece of paper sitting on his pillow.

He opens it and finds a letter addressed to him, written in neat cursive with a bright orange pen. Clint snorts a little at that, but it quickly dies when he begins to read.

_Clint,_

_I’m so sorry for how much I upset you. I didn’t mean to make your situation harder on you than it already was. Really. I was only trying to help by telling you about Pietro, but I see now that_ ~~_maybe I was overstepping?_ ~~ _I was overstepping._

_That being said, there are some things I feel like I need to tell you before I can let this go. If you want to stop reading the letter at this point, I’ll understand._

_But please keep reading Clint._

_Laura was an excellent partner and the two of you raised an amazing family. You were a team - a damn good team at that. The two of you will remain good friends. You will still be a part of your children’s lives (even little Nathan Pietro -_ ~~_and seriously? How can you still be in denial?_ ~~ _)_

_Clint, listen to me. I know it can be scary when the future doesn't turn out the way you expect it to, but Pietro will be the best thing to ever happen to you. You will feel a love for that man that you never even knew was possible. He will awaken something in you that will make you feel more alive than you ever have before. It won’t be a smooth ride, but it’ll be so worth it._

_Trust me Clint, it’ll_ _be worth it._

_I just want you to be happy. I have seen you end up so unhappy. I just wanted to do what I could to prevent that._

_If there’s any good piece of advice I can give you here (after dumping all that on you), it’s that it’s OKAY if you don’t love Pietro - if you can’t even imagine loving him right now. There’s nothing wrong with that - there’s nothing wrong with YOU. Maybe one day you’ll change your mind - and maybe you won’t! I see so many futures, and if you don’t want to be with Pietro, you don’t have to._

_But I would advise that you do. (He will make you so happy.)_

_Again, I’m really sorry, Clint._

_~ Madison_

Fuck. Clint has no idea what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo new chapter!!
> 
> To be honest, these last 2 chapters were some of the first I had planned out for this story so I was very excited and fond of them
> 
> I just started a full-time nannying job, but I think I'll still be able to pull off the fairly consistent updating
> 
> Things are getting spicy in the We Were Here universe ;) Please let me know what you think of everything so far! I live for your opinions and praise!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony gets his feelings hurt and reacts in a very Tony-like way.

“Well, this is a pretty fucked up situation, huh?”

Tony manages to get a huff of laughter out of Steve as he crosses the room and places a cup of coffee in front of him. Steve looks up with eyebrows raised and the corners of his mouth twitching.

Tony is glad to see that the irony of the situation isn’t lost on Steve, either.

Usually Steve is the one delivering sustenance in the form of sweet, steaming caffeine to Tony, who has reclused himself and buried himself in his work beyond a point that was healthy.

Today, their roles were switched. But to be fair, it was definitely a special occasion. Their enemy knew how to bring people back from the dead. Isn’t that pleasant? Not only that, but they had chosen to bring back _Pietro fucking Maximoff_ , so that they had to actually give a shit about _rescuing_ someone instead of just blowing the whole operation to smithereens.

Tony already had a headache just thinking about it.

But, he was definitely better off than Steve at the moment. Aforementioned blonde Adonis hadn’t left the conference room since the moment they found out where Pietro was - which was 13 hours ago. He was seated at the large round table in the center of the room, surrounded by pages and pages of infiltration and extraction plans, patterns of attack and - was that a little sketch of a golden retriever? His eyes were red-rimmed and his plaid shirt is rumpled around the collar. There was a smudge of ink over his left eyebrow. Tony wanted to wipe it away.

Tony glanced between the piles of paper scattered around Steve and the huge board of high-tech computers sitting less than a foot away from him. 

Steve gave him a look that warned him not to say exactly what he was going to say, which _was_ that Steve could save himself so much goddamn time and energy if he just let Tony teach him how to use their systems and did his work on the computer instead of in chicken scratch like they were living in the dark ages.

Tony (very wisely) did not say any of that.

“Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that this situation is definitely pretty,” Steve pauses and a faint blush spreads across his cheeks. “Messed up,” he amends Tony’s previous statement to make it Captain America Approved. It’s ridiculous for a grown man to censor himself like that, Tony decides, but he can’t help the fondness he feels anyways. 

Tony walks around the table and plops down in the chair across from Steve, kicking his feet up onto the table. “You know, some might consider what you’re doing here to be obsessive and, oh shit, what was that other thing…personally destructive?” Tony flashes an innocent grin.

Steve sighs heavily and frowns down at his papers. “Not funny, Tony.”

Tony scoffs, “Of course it’s funny! Come on, when else will I ever get the chance to quote you back at yourself?”

“Literally every day, Tony. We live together.”

“Yeah but _this_ ,” Tony makes a vague hand gesture at all of Steve’s paperwork, “does not happen every day.”

“Special occasion.” Steve finally glances up from his papers and across the table at Tony. He looks back down immediately, but Tony could see the exhaustion and the fear in his eyes.

It’s unnerving, to say the least, for Tony to see him looking like that. Since Tony was a kid and had never even met the other man, Captain America was a symbol of strength and confidence. He was an icon of heroism and courage. He was their leader, the team looked up to him for everything - hell, the entire _nation_ looked up to him.

But this wasn’t Captain America sitting across from Tony, with his bloodshot eyes and rumpled checkered shirt. This was Steve Rogers - human, flawed, and scared.

And Tony had a pretty good idea why.

“Steve, are you -“ _okay?_ No, that was a stupid question, of course Steve wasn’t okay. Who would be, in this scenario? Tony sighs and pulls his feet off the table, leaning on his elbows towards Steve. “Wanna talk about it?” He simply offers.

A strange series of changes goes through Steve in that next moment. 

Immediately after Tony asks his question, Steve’s entire body goes rigid, from the tips of his fingers to the hard, tight line of his shoulders. 

Next, he snaps his pencil in half (which startled Tony to sit up straight, but also kinda impressed him) and stands out of his chair so quickly that it clatters to the ground behind him. Steve stalks over to the control panel ( _please, please, please don’t smash the computers_ , Tony prays) and slams his hands on the desk, hunched over and breathing heavily. Tony just watched the ragged rise and fall of his body, the tense shifting of his back muscles (which is totally not creepy because Tony is just _worried_ about his _friend._ It is not his fault said friend just happens to be an impressive physical specimen). 

Finally, Steve just sags (not a word Tony ever thought he would be using to describe Steve Rogers). All the fight and the anger seeps out of his body and his harsh lines soften. He hangs his head and turns around slowly, leaning back on the desk behind him and facing Tony, arms crossed defensively in front of his chest, contrasting with the wide open look on his face.

“No,” Steve says, but it sounds more like a question to Tony.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Tony says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “What could there possibly be to talk about? Our old dead teammate is just alive again and HYDRA has an initiative in effect that brings people back from the dead. Just another day at the office.”

“I’m really not in the mood, Tony.” Steve sighs heavily. Tony frowns.

“Too damn bad. Out with it, Cap.” Steve frowns back at him.

“You already know.”

“Yeah,” Tony nods his head solemnly. “I have an idea.”

The two of them sit there looking at each other, and a look of understanding passes through them. It’s always made Tony a little bit warm inside when he thought about how easily he and Steve had always been able to communicate like that. From the day they met each other, even when they didn’t get along, they somehow understood each other. With just a look or a small touch, they could have an entire conversation while everyone around them was none the wiser. (Tony knew this drove Clint absolutely insane.)

But sometimes, even though Tony hated it with a burning passion, an actual conversation with _words_ needed to be had. Like right now.

“It won’t be like that,” Tony promises. Steve makes a small sound of disagreement and Tony quickly follows with: “It won’t be like Bucky again, Steve.”

“You don’t know that. HYDRA already has Pietro, they’re already torturing him, who knows what the hell they put in his head when they brought him back?”

“Failsafe had nothing in its files about brainwashing, I’m sure they were way too focused on keeping him alive to worry about chanting some magic words at him.” Tony tries to soothe when he notices Steve starting to lose what little cool he had left.

“Just because it wasn’t in the file doesn’t mean it’s impossible that they’re doing it. You know as well as I do that HYDRA scientists aren’t exactly sticklers for following procedure. They could’ve, he could be, _hell,_ Tony, I could be too late again!” Steve picks his chair back up and slumps into it. He buries his face in his hands. “I could be too late again,” he repeats morosely.

Tony watches Steve quietly across the table, takes a moment to compose his thoughts.

“First of all,” Tony finally breaks the silence. “What’s up with all this ‘I’ shit? I’m pretty sure the ‘no I in team’ saying was around, even in your day.” Steve looks up, eyebrows raised. “This is _not_ all on you. _You_ weren’t too late to save Bucky and _you_ aren’t going to be too late to save Pietro. We may not always act like it, but we’re a team.” Steve almost smiles. “Secondly, anything they do to Pietro before we get there, we will fix. Fix whatever the bad guys break, just like we always do. And finally,” Tony pauses for effect. “That is a very nice drawing of a dog.” Tony points dramatically at the small doodle.

Steve actually laughs out loud at that, and just like that the spell is broken. Sad, gloomy Steve goes back into his cage and logical, level-headed Steve takes the reigns once again. His tenseness fades and he leans back in his chair with a heavy sigh, crossing his arms behind his head in a way that makes his arm muscles bulge _very_ distractingly.

“Thanks. It’s a golden retriever.”

“Knew it.” Steve smiles at him. “So,” Tony continues carefully. “That’s what’s got you all in a funk? You’re afraid they’re gonna do to Pietro what they did to Bucky and you won’t be able to stop it?”

“I can’t let them do what they did to Bucky to anyone else ever again,” Steve says, voice gravely serious. “It’s - it was my fault Bucky died, I couldn’t save him, so it was my fault that HYDRA ever found him and did what they did to him. I just, I have to make sure this plan is perfect,” Steve looks down at the papers in front of him. “I can’t let anything go wrong,” he mumbles down at them.

“You’re beating yourself up to come up with the perfect plan of attack, because if we mess up and don’t, for whatever reason, end up saving Pietro, you’re going to blame it all on yourself?” Tony isn’t really asking, and Steve must know that because he doesn’t even bother answering.

“I’m the captain of this team. It’s my responsibility, just like Bucky was. Besides,” Steve’s voice goes quiet and sad. “I can’t let that happen to Wanda. She just found out she got her brother back, I can’t let her down and I can’t - I can’t let Pietro end up the way Bucky did. He’s everything to her, she can’t lose him again. When I, when Bucky,” Steve takes a shaky breath. “Bucky was _my_ everything, and now it’s like we barely know each other. He was my best friend, the person I loved most of all and now… And now I have nothing.”

Tony blinks. Blinks again. Takes a moment to make sure he heard Steve right.

_Nothing_.

Steve had nothing.

Tony was _nothing._

There’s a tightness in the back of his throat that feels like he swallowed a golf ball. Tony looks at Steve - perfect, righteous, gorgeous Steve and thinks, _of course._ Of _course_ he was nothing to Steve. In what universe would it actually make sense for Tony to mean anything at all to the man who bore the title and the honor of being Captain America?

Tony Stark and _Captain America_? Yeah, keep dreaming. Teammates? Sure. Buddies? Maybe. Friends? Highly unlikely. More than friends? Not in a million years.

Tony can practically hear Howard laughing at him from the grave.

Steve cocks his head to the side and furrows his brow. “Tony?”

Tony blinks. “Oh, you know what Cap, I completely forget that I left the um, I was working on the schematics for, and I forgot them in the, wow I had no idea how late it was so I’m just gonna run and do that.” Tony begins backing out of the room.

“Do…what, exactly?” Steve asks, voice confused.

“Good talk and good luck with that, um,” Tony waves his hand over the table. “That planning and stuff. I’m sure everything is gonna be great. Fantastic, even!”

“Tony!” Steve calls, voice concerned, but Tony is already out the door and walking briskly down the hallway and into the elevator.

When he gets to his room, he shuts the door behind him and rests his forehead against it, letting his facade drop for the first time since he left Steve in the conference room.

Nothing.

Tony’s face crumples and he lets out a harsh breath. He isn’t sure how long he stands there, breathing roughly against the wood of the door and squeezing his eyes closed tightly enough that nothing gets out, but suddenly he knows exactly what he needs to do.

Tony grabs some things from his closet. A dark maroon hoodie, a faded navy blue baseball cap, and a black thermal, long-sleeve shirt.

“Friday,” he tugs the baseball hat on his head and pulls it low over his eyes.. “Pull around the Ferrari F60 to the front.”

_______________________________________________________

 

Three hours later, Tony is a lot drunker than he planned on being.

The bar counter in front of him keep getting closer and further away and Tony doesn’t know if it’s because he’s actually rocking back and forth or his vision is just fucked. The bartender tried to cut him off an hour and a half ago, but Tony slid him a crisp hundred dollar bill and the guy didn’t hesitate to pour him any more drinks after that. 

His head felt light and heavy at the same time. Like, when he was just sitting still, it felt like his head was floating way above his body, but when he tried to roll out his neck, his head suddenly felt like a cinderblock, rolling around with exaggerated movement and tipping his entire body off-kilter. 

Tony’s tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth in an incredibly uncomfortable way and his fingers weren’t as coordinated as he generally liked them to be.

Tony Stark: Highly functioning alcoholic. 

It was transitioning from late in the evening to early in the morning and the crowd was getting younger and rowdier, the music pulsing and lights flashing in a way that they weren’t when Tony first got there (which felt like forever ago).

One guy across the bar stares at him a little too long, and suddenly Tony is gripped with paranoia. What if the guy recognized him? What if the bartender recognized him? Was he even still wearing his hat? What if they were HYDRA? What if they called the paparazzi? God, why was he such an _idiot_ , risking himself and everyone else like this.

Urgently, Tony pulls out his keys and pauses.

He can’t drive home like this.

He can’t call a cab either, the driver could recognize him and then tomorrow his face would be plastered all over the tabloids as his drinking binge turned into a national scandal. Which normally was business as usual for Tony, but in this case it could alert HYDRA to his whereabouts and put him and his entire team at risk.

Fuck. Tony pulls out his phone, finger hovering for a few seconds over a few different contacts before he makes his decision.

“Tony? What’s going on? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Are you old ‘nough to have a driver’s license?”

“Fuck you.” A pause. “Send me your location.”

_________________________________________________________

 

Tony could cry with relief when he sees his familiar black and red Bugatti pulling up to the bar with the equally familiar person in the driver’s seat.

“You smell like a wet dog that just went dumpster diving,” Madison tells him when he climbs into the passenger seat. “But your taste in expensive cars is impeccable and I’m getting to _drive_ an actual Bugatti, so I’m gonna let it slide.”

“You’re’a saint.” Tony mumbles under his breath, slumping down in his seat. Madison eyes him carefully out of the corner of her eye.

“Everything okay?”

“Peachy.”

“Whatever you say.” Madison focuses her eyes back on the road.

The long stretch of California highway ahead of them is pitch black, dotted with the lights of the cars around them and illuminated only by the moon. Madison has the windows all the way down so that the warm, sticky night air blows against his face. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, letting the fresh air clear his mind and sober him up the tiniest bit.

“So I was thinking,” Madison breaks the silence. “When we go to get Pietro, I had this idea that we could-“

“I’m sorry,” Tony interrupts. “That sounded suspiciously like you said ‘we’, as if you were coming.” Madison frowns.

“Of course I’m coming, why wouldn’t I?” Tony laughs, can’t stop himself.

“Like hell are you going anywhere near a combat situation, kid. You aren’t trained for that kind of stuff - you’re staying nice and safe, all cozy at the mansion, painting your nails and watching the Kardashians, or whatever it is you wanna do.” Madison makes an unnecessarily jerky righthand turn and Tony’s stomach contents churn dangerously.

“Are you kidding me?” She growls. “You’re the one who brought me into this, this mess of yours! You brought me into the team, and you got me involved. Well guess what? Now I’m involved.”

“The fight I brought you here for was different.” Tony turns his face away from Madison and towards the open window.

“How?”

“They wouldn’t have killed you. HYDRA will kill you. You aren’t coming.”

“I want to help save Pietro!”

“Sure, kid. From the mansion. I’ll Skype you.”

“Tony!” Madison whines, and Tony is gonna need like, 500 Aspirins when he gets home. “I can be an asset to the mission! I promise not to get in the way, you don’t have to worry about me the whole time, I can take care of myself and I-“

The Bugatti jolts up, bumps over something. Madison lets out a startled scream and Tony bangs his head into the door. He grabs at the spot that he hit, sobering up almost completely from the shock of it.

“What the-“ He turns and looks over his shoulder at the road behind them.

“Oh my god,” Madison gasps. “I hit something, oh god, Tony I hit something, I’m so - what did I hit?” She’s halfway to hyperventilating now, elbows locked rigidly as she grips the steering wheel, eyes wide and staring intensely at the road in front of her.

“I, I think,” Tony squints. “Looks like a fox.”

Madison’s face crumples, a choked out sob tearing out of her throat. “Oh god, oh god, oh god,” She mutters hysterically to herself. “Did I - did I kill it?” she asks in a small voice.

Tony doesn’t answer.

Madison silently cries the entire drive home.

Tony feels bad for her, he really does. She’s in shock and she’s slightly hysterical and she probably just killed something for the first time in her life. She’s understandably shaken up. 

She was sensitive… If she wasn’t so valuable, Tony would consider her _too_ sensitive for this line of work and have sent her home weeks ago.

He remembers the conversation he had with her just earlier that day; post-finding out that Pietro was alive, and prior to his little talk with Steve.

_“Hey, kid,” Tony strolls into Madison’s room. She’s sitting at the foot of the bed, looking down at her lap. The lights are all off, only the glow of three small candles lighting the room. Tony thinks she was probably just meditating._

_“Natasha says you missed your training session with her this after-“ Madison looks up and he sees the tears in her eyes. “-noon.”_

_Okay, so, not meditating. Madison quickly looks back down at her lap and scrubs at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Sorry, tell Natasha I’m sorry, I’ll do an extra hour tomorrow to make it up to her.”_

_Tony glances over his shoulder at the door. This would be an excellent opportunity to leave in order to relay the information to Natasha. Madison had given him the perfect excuse to exit the situation._

_He walks over and sits on the bed next to her._

_“You’re not… hurt, are you?” He asks. Madison hesitates, shakes her head slowly._

_“I think I might have hurt someone else.”_

_“What?” Tony is baffled. “Did you, did something happen? Is everyone okay?” He has a hard time imagining Madison being able to hurt anyone in the mansion, but he figures it’s not completely impossible._

_“No, no!” Madison’s eyes go wide. “It’s nothing like that! There was no, it wasn’t like a physical altercation or anything. I just, it was an accident.” She sighs heavily. “I thought I was helping, and I only made things worse.” She looks up at him with wide, earnest eyes. “Do you ever feel like that? Like no matter how hard you try to do good, you ruin everything?”_

_Tony swallows hard and forces a smirk to his face. “Kid, that should be the name of my autobiography.”_

_So Tony stays with her. Not for too long, maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes. He didn’t stay because he had to, he stayed because he wanted to. He could relate a little too well to how she was feeling, and he felt responsible for her - protective of her. He was the reason she was here, going through all of this. He was going to make sure she made it out okay._

_And he’s been in this position. Having tried to help and failed. He knows what she needs right now to take the sting off of it, at least just a little._

_She just needs someone to listen to her, sympathize with her, and give her words of affirmation. (All things that Tony never had.) ((Until Steve.))_

_Tony listens to her. She doesn’t tell him exactly what happens, says it isn’t her place to share. But he listens to her vague ramblings anyways._

_He’s been there. He’s felt it all. She cries at some points. It doesn’t make him as uncomfortable as it usually does._

_Tony knows he isn’t the person who can give her the complete peace of mind she needs. Only the person she thinks she hurt can do that, but by the end of it, she seems a little more at ease._

_When they’ve finished their talk Tony stands, gently squeezes her shoulder, and tells her everything is going to be okay. He knows he’s lying. She knows he’s lying. She smiles anyways, because sometimes all you need is to just hear those words. Tony can give her that much._

_And that’s that._

After hitting the fox, Madison doesn’t mention going on the mission to save Pietro again.

Tony thinks he’s finally in the clear, ready to pop some pills and drop dead in his bed, mind a blank slate. 

That is, until they get to the mansion. 

Tony, being the gentleman that he is, tells Friday to take the elevator to drop Madison off at her room first. He’s not sure Madison would be able to make the command herself if he hadn’t done it. She still hasn’t spoken a word since the car (not that Tony is complaining, his head was pounding and he really appreciated the silence).

Madison didn’t speak a word until they got to her room. She stepped out of the elevator and Tony said goodnight, like a normal human does. 

Like a normal human does _not_ do, without even turning around, Madison responded: “Work whatever is bothering you out with Steve.” and walks to her door.

Later, when Tony is lying in bed, he realizes that Madison pocketed the keys to his Bugatti. He laughs so hard he cries. 

It’s a nice distraction from everything else his brain is screaming at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Update! Sorry this one took so long, and was kinda just a filler. More action to come, next chapter! Plenty of feelings and angsty goodness on the way!
> 
> I leave tomorrow for Hawaii, so I don't know when my next update will be... I will try my hardest to work on it while I'm there (since I love writing this and it's what I'll be wanting to do anyways) but I can't make any promises :(
> 
> I will try and update the second I get home, so 10 days at the latest


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More misunderstandings and Pietro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF I worked on this for like 3 days over my vacation... I hope it was worth it and you guys enjoy!!

Steve is pretty sure that if he didn’t have a serum coursing through his veins that made him practically indestructible, he’d be dead right now.

Which was, admittedly, a pretty vague statement that could apply to a great number of situations that had occurred in his life: being caught in an explosion, being exposed to poisonous gas, being thrown from an aircraft, jumping from the top of a 30-story building, etc.

Compared to all of those things he’d survived, he figured he’d be pretty embarrassed if _this_ was what finally made him kick the bucket. _This_ being sleep deprivation. He really had no idea how Tony did this all the time.

It had been four days - five days? Or was it already Tuesday again? _Seven days?_ Steve had no idea, quite frankly, how long it had been, but he hadn’t slept since the moment he found out Pietro Maximoff was alive and being experimented on by HYDRA. 

Silver lining: not sleeping meant he didn’t have to deal with the treacherous nightmares he was sure would plague him now. All the old memories that this Pietro situation was bringing up, the remaining guilt being dredged back up to the surface…

So Steve hadn’t been sleeping. Really, he hadn’t been eating, either. Drinking? He remembered Tony bringing him coffee once, but he hadn’t seen the other man since then… Or if he did, he didn’t remember it. But since Tony bringing him coffee, he hadn’t had any food or drink.

He was entirely too busy trying to figure out how to keep his team from being killed. Ever. For the rest of their lives.

Okay, maybe that was a bit of an overkill. 

But if he could, don’t think for a second that Steve wouldn’t.

Steve went over and over his plans, making little tweaks and adjustments as he saw fit. He had no idea when it would actually be time to put the plans into action and it was making him ridiculously anxious. He didn’t like not having a set time. He didn’t like not having a plan.

They were waiting for Clint and Natasha to pull a few strings and arrange for a more inconspicuous mode of transportation to the HYDRA base in Idaho. They’d see them coming from miles away if they tried to show up in the Quinjet.

So Steve waited. He paced and he waited and he worked, knowing that at any moment Clint and Natasha could hear back from their contact and announce an immediate departure.

He couldn’t be caught off guard. Everything had to go perfectly.

However, when the words all starting blurring together and he accidentally made a plan of attack where Clint could fly, he realized that he wasn’t doing himself or the team any good working like this. It was obsessive, as Tony told him. The same way Tony always was… It filled Steve with a strange sort of warmth to think about the similarity between them.

And thinking of Tony made him realize he missed him.

They had gone months without seeing each other, only talking every few days, but over the past two weeks Steve had grown accustomed to seeing Tony every day whenever he wanted to. It was a comfort to him to have the other man so near and available.

He could always be sure that Tony was okay, unlike the stretch of time that lasted days between their phone calls. Those days where he was always on edge, thinking about Tony, worrying about Tony.

Steve decided to give himself a break now. He didn’t want Tony worrying about him the way he did about Tony. His stomach grumbled loudly, so he headed to the kitchen for some lunch. Dinner? What time was it?

On his way down to the kitchen, he passes by the conference room and hears a familiar, warm sound.

It’s Tony. Laughing. And damn, if that isn’t the best thing he’s heard in days. 

It’s a real Tony laugh, high and clear, and Steve can just picture the way his eyes are crinkling and his mouth stretched into a wide grin.

He can’t help himself from walking in.

Tony is sitting at the desk with all the computers, an image of a pretty woman with red hair and a demure smile being projected across most of the screens. She looks at Tony fondly through the screens and he’s still chuckling, wiping at the corner of his eyes.

That explains Tony’s happiness. It’s Pepper. Steve feels tightness in his chest, wants to back away because he suddenly feels like a foreigner, but he can’t make his feet walk out of the room when he hasn’t seen Tony this close in days.

“You’re ridiculous, Tony.” Pepper sighs through bright red lips. 

“Ridiculously brilliant,” he counters, grin never faltering. Pepper laughs and shakes her head.

Her eyes lock with Steve’s. Pepper tilts her head to the side.

“You’ve got company,” she tells Tony without looking away from Steve. He feels locked in place by her powerful gaze. She just smiles politely at him as Tony wheels around in his chair.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, Miss Potts,” Steve apologizes quickly. “I just heard Tony and wanted to-“

“To what?” Tony cuts him off sharply. There’s this tenseness to his body and a coldness in his eyes when he looks at Steve that’s never been there before. Steve is caught completely off guard by it.

“To, uh, I just wanted to say…hi? See what you were up to?” He offers hesitantly. He is acutely aware of Pepper’s sympathetic gaze on him, but he can’t look away from Tony’s harsh one.

“I’m busy, as you can see.” Steve frowns.

“I wasn’t trying to interrupt, I was just about to leave.”

“Great, feel free to do that now.” Steve takes a step backwards, sure that his hurt must be showing clearly on his face. He opens his mouth a few times to respond, but just keeps closing it again. He and Tony have fought before, of course, but this was… This was something else. A side of Tony he didn’t know how to respond to.

He reminded Steve a bit of Howard on his bad days.

After a few moments of Steve not moving or saying a word, Tony sighs roughly and a bit of his anger just turns into tiredness.

“Please, see yourself out now. I’m in the middle of a call,” he requests this time with a little of the edge taken off of it.

“Of course.” Steve looks at Pepper who quickly schools her look of shock and disappointment into her usual polite grin. “Miss Potts,” he nods to her before turning on his heel and walking towards the door.

“Nice seeing you, Captain,” she calls. The moment Steve is on the other side of the door, his enhanced hearing skills happen to hear her speak again. He’s not eavesdropping, he’s just…enhanced. 

“Oh, Tony,” she sounds tired now, too. “What happened?”

“ _Nothing._ ” Tony spits, and Steve thinks there’s just a bit too much venom in the word. He sighs heavily. “Can we just talk, Pep? I just wanted to talk to you, hear what you’re up to, how you’re doing.”

She agrees, easily swayed by his charm, and they begin chatting amicably again.

Steve thinks he realizes why Tony was so mad at him.

Tony must miss Pepper a lot while he’s away, and Steve had interrupted some of the rare, cherished time he got with his girlfriend. Steve suddenly felt awful, knowing that part of the reason Tony couldn’t be with her right now was due to him and the entire Accords situation. 

Pepper seemed so good for him, and clearly he was so happy just getting to see her face and hear her voice. Steve’s heart lurched uncomfortably. He couldn’t remember the last time he was in love like that. Tony and Pepper were lucky, he thought, as he downed one ham sandwich, and then another. 

When he was on his third sandwich, Clint and Natasha came in looking for him. 

They had arranged for private access of a commercial plane. 

They were leaving that night.

 

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

“That tight enough?”

“Yeah, perfect, thanks Nat.”

“Sam, can you pass me that - no, not that one - _yes!_ Thanks, man.”

“Is that supposed to be sticking out like that? Here, let me fix it for you.”

“ _Hold still!_ It wouldn’t hurt so much if you would just let me -“

“Whose are these? Anyone?? Oh, yeah, no problem, pass these to Rhodey, guys.”

It was organized chaos of the most beautiful kind. Steve thrived on the energy pulsing through the room as the Avengers - _his team_ \- suited up and prepared for battle, dancing around each other in perfect synchronization. 

“Rhodey, I swear to whatever God you believe in if that flight stabilizer is not set like I told you _a hundred times-_ “ Tony is striding across the room, all practiced grace and confidence. He begins fiddling with something on Rhodey’s suit, muttering curses under his breath that everyone knows he doesn’t mean while Rhodey just stands there with a sheepish grin.

Steve had been keeping his distance from Tony since he barged in on his call with Pepper. He had Rhodey inform Tony of their departure for him. Tony had yet to look at him.

It was a bit confusing to Steve. He really thought that by now, after having had his talk with Pepper, Tony would be in a better mood.

Well, actually, that was unfair to say. Tony was in a perfectly fine mood, as far as Tony’s moods went. He just still seemed angry with _Steve_ in particular.

Which of course, Tony had been angry with him before, but it was usually mutual and for an understood reason. Steve had no idea what was going on in Tony’s mind, but he wasn’t going to let it get in the way of successfully completing their mission.

He couldn’t let it. He had worked too hard to see it all fall apart over something he did wrong that he didn’t even know about.

Steve does the final strap of his gloves and goes over to confront Tony.

“Tony,” Steve approaches carefully when he sees that Tony is finally alone. Tony stiffens and doesn’t turn around.

“What.”

“I, well, I wanted to apologize.” 

This gets Tony’s attention. Slowly he turns around, a suspicious look on his face. “For what?”

“For interrupting your call earlier today,” Steve says earnestly. Tony just stares.

“For what?”

“Earlier when you were on the phone with Pepper,” Steve explains. “You were pretty upset when I came in, and I just wanted to apologize. It was rude of me to-“ Tony cuts him off with a snort of laughter. He turns away from Steve and walks away, over to the big round table with all of the diagrams on it. He’s suddenly (and for the first time ever!) very interested in studying Steve’s plans.

Steve follows and stands across the table from him.

“Interrupting my call, seriously? Sorry for interrupting my call…” Tony is muttering to himself.

“Tony,” Steve says sharply, tone verging on his Captain voice. Tony drags his gaze up to settle on Steve. “I’ve apologized for what I thought I did wrong. Now it’s your turn to fix your attitude and start acting like a team player.”

“This game is getting old, Captain,” he drawls. Steve slams his hands on the table and leans over it towards Tony.

“I’m not a mind-reader, damn it! Why won’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”

Tony slams his hands on the table and leans across it, mirroring Steve. “ _Nothing_ ,” he hisses in that same venomous tone he used when Pepper asked him about it. Steve knows he’s supposed to understand but he just can’t. They stay like that, hunched across the table at each other, eyes locked and narrowed.

Nothing? What the hell did Tony mean by ‘nothing’? How was Steve supposed to know what all of this was about? He hadn’t even talked to Tony in days! The last time they talked, it was about Bucky and Pietro, and it was fine, although maybe a little weird at the end when Tony ran away after Steve talked about -

Oh.

Shit.

Steve settles back away from Tony, stands up straight. His eyes soften as he looks at the man across from him - the man that he often forgets is so fragile. Tony, seeing the change in Steve, leans back as well, a cautious expression on his face.

“I’m sorry, Tony.” Steve says it softer this time. Tony just narrows his eyes. “I’m sorry I said that, Tony. I didn’t mean it.”

Tony blinks. Opens his mouth and closes it. Then crosses his arms and ducks his head.

“It’s no big deal, it doesn’t matter,” he grumbles petulantly. Steve shakes his head, heart shattering as he realizes what his careless words had done to his closest friend.

“It does matter,” he insists. “I spoke without thinking and I didn’t even realize… Tony, I’m so sorry. I never want to hurt you, please believe me.”

“I believe you.” Tony doesn’t sound convinced. Steve wants him to be convinced, wants Tony to _trust_ him. He knows for that to happen he needs to be honest, speak exactly how he’s feeling.

“You mean a lot to me, Tony.” Tony’s head jerks up, eyes unreadable. “It’s important to me that you tell me if I ever upset you so I can fix it. You, you’re not nothing, Tony. You’re everything.” And Steve doesn’t really know what he means by that, but it just feels right, and Tony looks pleased so that’s all that matters.

Clint comes over to tell them that the plane is ready. The rest of the team is looking over at them and Steve figures they had been watching the whole thing, waiting for a good time to send Clint over (because they _always_ sent Clint. It was impossible to be mad at the guy).

They left that night. Tony sat next to Steve on the plane and fell asleep on his shoulder.

Steve just smiled in the low light of the early morning, ignoring the small, insistent tugging at his gut, telling him things he wasn’t sure he understood.

____________________________________________________________________

 

They flew for fucking _ever._ At least, that’s what it felt like to Clint. They had been flying around for hours in random flight patterns instead of going directly to Idaho to throw HYDRA off their tail just in case anyone was starting to get suspicious (and, hello, Earth’s mightiest heroes had been AWOL for 2 weeks, bad guys were definitely getting suspicious).

So, yeah, basically forever. 

Clint was tired, and hungry, and getting sick of pacing up and down the narrow aisles of the cramped Southwest Airlines plane their old friend from the academy had hooked them up with. He was antsy, driving everyone else onboard completely insane as he couldn’t sit still.

He wanted a burger. He wanted a nap.

He wanted to pretend they weren’t on their way to Pietro.

A week later, and yes, he was still having trouble coming to terms with everything Madison had told him. 

He missed Laura and his kids. He wasn’t gay. He barely even knew Pietro.

He had the distinct feeling that these things weren’t going to be true for much longer. But, at the moment they _were_ true, so Clint was sticking with his gut, believing only what he already knew to be true, and rolling with it. He was ignoring the future, ignoring the prophecy that he was such an idiot for ever asking for in the first place. He was living his life as if that fateful day had never happened - he had never gone to Madison for help, she had never told him his future, he had never cried himself to sleep.

Nope. None of it. Never happened.

Clint was living in the _moment_. He was letting the chips fall where they may, star-crossed lovers bullshit be damned. 

Clint was in charge of his own future. He would love whoever he wanted to love.

Still, coming to this brilliant conclusion did little to clear his conscience. In the past week, Madison had withdrawn herself almost completely from the rest of the team, not unlike Steve, so no one really thought much of it. No one except Clint, who knew what really happened. 

Clint felt terrible for the way he spoke to her. She was just a kid, already having a hard enough time, and this was her first time ever dealing with shit this big. She was still learning, still messing up, still rough around the edges. She acted without thinking, she didn’t realize the weight of her actions.

She was a lot like Wanda when Clint first met her, and he had taken quite well to her. Wanda _listened_ to him, trusted him and respected him. He kinda mentored her for a while there before passing her off to Steve when he went into retirement.

Steve looked after her well, he could tell. He protected her and tried to show her what her full potential could be. Much like Clint noticed Tony doing for Madison.

She was just a kid, and Clint made her feel like the weight of all of his problems was resting on her shoulders.

Of course, he realized that now that he was running out the door and it was a bit too late to say much. 

Madison, Wanda, and Vision were staying behind at the tower, while himself, Tony, Steve, Nat, Rhodey, Sam, and Bucky made up the Pietro Rescue Squad (a name that Clint came up with all by himself). Madison wasn’t much of a combat type, even if she was being trained by Nat. It was too soon, she was still unskilled in the field. She didn’t put up much of an argument when Tony announced she would be staying behind, communicating over the comms with the team and still helping them, but from a safe distance.

Wanda, it was decided, would stay back as well due to the delicate nature of the mission. She was too emotionally invested into it, Pietro being her twin brother and all, and it could compromise her rational decision-making skills in the field. Steve didn’t want to risk anything going wrong, so he eliminated what he thought to be a possible Wild Card from the equation. Wanda put up a bit more of a fight, but with a promise from Clint to do everything he could to bring Pietro back to her, Wanda settled. (What? He was a sucker for the girl, he just wanted to put her mind at ease.)

Vision didn’t really like flying on planes. Plus, the infinity stone lodged in his skull (did Vision have a skull??) apparently gave off some kind of beacon of immense power to bad guys that they couldn’t risk blowing their cover. So, Vision stayed in Malibu, too.

The team stood together in Tony’s driveway, getting ready to drive to the airport, where they would sneak in through the back and be granted their own flight. Just as Clint was slipping into the passenger seat beside Nat, he turned and caught Madison hugging herself tightly, looking pale, and watching him. She looked away as soon as he caught her eye, but he kept looking until she locked gazes with him again.

He nodded. She smiled. He owed her more than that, but for now, it would do.

They landed in Dietrich, Idaho in the late hours of the night (early hours of the morning, depending on how you looked at it). Everyone was sleep-deprived except Tony, who used Steve as a human pillow for at least 3 hours on the flight. They were running on pure adrenaline, but they all agreed that this was better than waiting until the morning to attack. No one wanted to leave Pietro in the hands of HYDRA any longer than necessary.

So they infiltrated the HYDRA base. Just them, no backup or intel from SHIELD, no schematics of the building, no idea how many enemies there were.

Just them - the Avengers; barging in, guns blazing, and hoping for the best.

“Hawkeye, you still with me?”

Clint blinks, turns down another hallway. “Yeah, Cap. I’m with you. I just - there’s like, no one here?” 

The base was practically empty, only a few guards at the entrance, and one guy who happened to be walking down the wrong corridor at the same time as him. They were lightly armed, poorly trained, and scarce.

He and Nat had been sent in first to scope things out, while Tony and Sam used their fancy tech stuff to scan the building, looking for threats, giant weapons of mass destruction, Pietro, etc.

“I’ve got the same situation on the South side.” Nat reports.

“Okay, this is officially the lamest HYDRA base ever.”

“Just keep looking, Iron Man”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.” Tony flies up to a window down the hall from Clint and knocks on it. When Clint looks over, Tony waves. Clint flips him off and grins when Tony flies away indignantly.

Not even a moment later Tony suddenly announces: “Got him.” Clint’s blood runs cold. “North side, 7th floor, furthest corridor on the right.”

“Hawkeye?” Steve implores. “You got him?”

“I - what?” Clint’s brain stops functioning properly. “Don’t you want me to, like, sit on the roof and shoot at stuff like I always do?”

“You’re the closest to his location, by far,” Steve explains. “That’s not a problem, is it?” It sounds simultaneously like an order and like he actually cares if it’s a problem for Clint.

“No ma’am, not a problem at all,” Clint quips, hoping no one can hear his voice shaking.

He goes up two flights of stairs. He walks down the hall, all the way to the right.

He doesn’t know how he knows, but he can just tell which room Pietro is being held in. It’s like there’s this invisible thrum of electricity pulsing from it, drawing Clint to it. He tries not to think about it too much.

His hand is on the door, his heart is in his throat. People are shouting reports over the comms, but all he can hear is his own blood pumping through his veins.

This is a mission, not a soap opera. He can’t afford to be emotional right now.

Clint throws the door open, acts like he just got there and hasn’t been standing right outside having a crisis for at least a minute. 

Not that Pietro would’ve noticed either way.

The first thing Clint’s eyes are drawn to is the distinct shock of white hair ( _not_ Pietro’s bare, heaving chest, thank you very much). It’s drenched with sweat, plastered to his forehead. Clint works his way down, taking in the harsh restraints of thick metal wrapped around every part of Pietro like a vine. 

There’s a bar across his forehead, one around his neck, three thick ones around his torso. He’s got them wrapped around his wrists and ankles, elbows and knees. 

And god, the shaking. 

Pietro is shaking like he’s been freezing for years and he’ll never be warm again. His entire body wracks painfully against the restraints as he seems to vibrate in place, his cells tearing and pulling him painfully in all directions, unable to get anywhere. His teeth are clenched, his breathing pained and labored.

Clint can’t even imagine how much pain Pietro must be in. For an enhanced whose constant state of being is motion and movement and speed, he can’t even comprehend the physical torture it must be for Pietro to be held still when he needs to badly to just _move._ Clint almost starts crying just thinking about how long they’ve had him like this, how close he must be to death. 

Madison told them the doctor she saw in her vision said he would die soon. He certainly looks it.

Clint is standing in the doorway, shell-shocked, thinking this can’t get any more intense, when Pietro, having apparently sensed the presence of another, pries his eyes open and turns them to him.

His eyes have still kept their same shocking blue color.

“Well,” Pietro gasps out through a painful looking grin. Clint almost collapses at just the sound of his voice. “This is awkward, no?” He manages to grit out just a moment before his entire body begins convulsing against the restraints again, even more aggressively this time.

Clint rushes forward, hands hovering over the restrains. “What, um, what happens when I open these?” He eyes Pietro’s convulsing limbs warily.

“I do not know,” Pietro’s icy eyes, suddenly so much closer and bluer stare at him with a wicked, dangerous glint to them. Clint knows he’s about to agree to whatever Pietro says. “Let’s find out, hm?”

Clint reaches for the first clasp when a sudden loud, harsh sound comes through the comms.

“Tony!” Madison screams, voice strained with…fear? “They’re here,” she gasps. “HYDRA, they knew you’d be gone, somehow, they just-” she talks fast and breathes hard.

“We’re under attack,” Wanda confirms, voice steadier than Madison’s, but still grim.

“Wanda…” Pietro whispers. He looks up at Clint, more determined and less playful this time. He looks like he’s really alive again for the first time since Clint had walked in the room.

“Open them.”

Clint doesn’t even hesitate to comply. He has a terrible, bone-deep feeling that this is going to become common for him when it comes to Pietro. He tries not to think about it and just live in the moment. (Unfortunately, this particular moment really sucks.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! I had a lot of fun writing this one (Clint's POV might be my favorite)
> 
> Please let me know what you guys thought! There's still a lot more to come in this story and your feedback really helps me!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the holy hell is the Failsafe Initiative anyways? ft. emotionally stunted Tony Stark trying his best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been so long! Exactly a month since I updated and I have no excuse other than my summer got a little crazy with vacations and working full time and I'm sooo sorry!
> 
> Please accept this chapter as a token of my sincerest apologies.

Tony only has a brief moment to enjoy the fact that Madison called to him instead of their Captain when she was in trouble.

Then he realizes she’s in trouble.

He’s vaguely aware of Steve yelling out commands to Madison and Wanda to remain calm, asking Clint if he’s secured Pietro, and ordering the team to meet back on the plane.

The plane will be too slow. They’ll be too late.

There’s a manly yelp over the comm system as Clint eloquently informs them, “Uh, yeah guys, I just lost Pietro.” Steve lets out a frustrated groan, starts yelling new instructions and everything is going to shit. 

“It’s not my fault!” Clint defends. “I let the kid loose and he was just - gone! Off like a fucking rocket, how the fuck was I supposed to stop him?” And now he and Steve are fighting and Sam and Bucky are bickering over where Pietro might be and Rhodey can’t find the floor that Natasha is telling him to pick her up at because, ‘they don’t put the floor numbers on the outside of the building, Widow!’

So yeah, everything is going to shit and Tony needs to do something. Now.

He needs to save his team. He needs to make someone pay. And lucky for them, that someone was going to be HYDRA.

“Everyone out of the building!” he shouts. There’s a brief pause, everyone probably wondering what the hell had gotten into him, before they decide that whatever it is, it would probably be best to get out of the building.

“Iron Man,” Steve warns. “What are you up to?” Tony flies a few circles around the perimeter of the building, making sure everyone in his team is safely out of it before crashing through a window and dropping through a few floors until he’s in the boiler room in the basement that he had seen there when he was scanning earlier.

“Nothing dear, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.” 

Tony looks around the room. There, in the back corner, was the main generator. Bingo. Steve tells him not to do whatever he’s about to do. Tony doesn’t answer.

“We’re leaving, Iron Man. _Now!_ ” Tony releases a small disk from a compartment on his hip. Just need to enter a few codes…

“Then leave!” Tony huffs. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m in a giant flying metal suit. I’ll catch up just fine.”

“We are not leaving without you.”

“They need you back at the mansion, just go!” In reality, Tony knows he’ll beat them back to the mansion. They weren’t on the Quinjet, they were on Southwest Airlines. They’d never make it back in time, which was part of the reason that Tony was staying behind and refusing to board with them.

There’s a long, pregnant pause. The disk in Tony’s hand begins blinking red, at first slowly, and then very quickly. He attaches it to the generator.

He goes to fly back out through the hole he crashed through to get down there.

He gets jerked backwards.

Tony looks back down and finds a loose cable that had been running through the floor he made the hole in was snagged on the boot of his suit.

“What’s that beeping noise?” 

“That, my dear James, is a bomb.”

“ _A bomb?_ Jesus Christ Tony, where the hell are you?” Steve sounds a bit panicked now. Still pissed, but a little worried now.

“In the basement.” Tony twists around and aims his repulsor at the cable. A low tremor from his bomb shakes the building and he misses.

“What the hell are you doing in the basement!?” Steve shouts.

“Trying to get out of it!” Tony shouts back, exasperated. The beeping gets faster.

“Tony-“ Steve starts, but Tony never hears the rest of it.

He aims his repulsor again. The bomb gives one final long beep. Then, the building blows.

 

_________________________________________________

 

There’s a low, faint buzzing noise. It’s persistent and whiney, but after a moment it goes away and Tony’s hearing clears up, along with his whited-out vision.

He made it out just in time.

“Steve?” he tries.

“Field communication links have been damaged, sir.” Friday informs him.

Great. Steve was going to be so _pissed_ at him for this. Tony brushes himself off and takes to the air, heading in the direction of Malibu. He couldn’t worry about what Steve would think right now, he had some life-saving to do. And ass-kicking. Those HYDRA thugs better not touch his fine crystal.

“Friday, can we open a link with the mansion?”

“Affirmative. Paging now.”

Tony shoots past the plane, hoping that maybe one of them caught a glimpse of him so they know he’s okay. He doesn’t have time to stop.

There’s a ringing in the suit as Friday pages the mansion.

“Tony?”

“Madison! Hey, yes, it’s me. What’s going on there?” Tony holds his breath, happy to hear she’s still alive.

“Wanda and Vision are out there fighting them. I- I don’t know how it’s going… I couldn’t - I’m just hiding here like I coward, I can’t help them.” She says, dejectedly.

“No, hey, it’s okay. Everyone does their part, right? Fighting is theirs, future-seeing is yours,” he assures her. “Where are you right now? I’m on my way and so is the rest of the team.”

“I’m in the control room.” She pauses. “Pietro?”

“He’s, uh, fine, just kinda gone right now.”

“ _Gone?_ Already?”

“Okay,” Tony huffs, “You try keeping track of him next time and see how it goes for you.” There’s a loud crashing that sounds like a door being kicked in. Madison screams and Tony loses the connection.

Tony feels numb. This is his fault. He’s the one who made her stay behind at the mansion in the first place, he’s the reason she’s the victim of this ambush. Him. His fault. His.

Tony feels the all-too-familiar sensation of his soul crumbling. Another disappointment. He had let another person down.

All he can do now is fly faster and pray that there’s something left that he can salvage.

 

____________________________________________

 

The scene that greets Tony when he arrives at the mansion is not the one that he expected.

There are HYDRA cronies everywhere, positively littering the place, but they’re all sprawled out on the ground, groaning and clutching at wounds or knocked completely out cold. The entire South wall is blown clean open, so he walks in through the rubble. Everything is a disaster, things smashed and holes in the ceiling.

But right there in the middle of it all is Wanda…

Clinging tightly to a very much alive Pietro Maximoff.

Now, Tony has seen it all.

“Looks like I was a bit late to the party.” 

Wanda lets go of Pietro and looks over at Tony with a blinding grin. He’s never seen her so happy before. She looks younger like that, he thinks.

“Tony, he’s really back,” she gushes.

“I can see that,” Tony nods. Pietro fixes him with a smirk.

“Mr. Stark,” he greets, and Tony never thought he’d actually be happy to hear that again. It was a victory. Pietro was their victory.

“Good to see you again,” and Tony finds that he actually means it. Pietro grins back at him. Suddenly, Tony feels like someone’s dumped a bucket of cold water over his head.

“Madison?” He asks urgently. “Where is she? Is she okay, I lost connection and-“

“The blonde girl?” Pietro cuts him off. He cocks his head to the side. “She is upstairs, perfectly fine, I kept her safe.” He says, aiming for casual, but coming off just a bit cocky. 

Tony takes the stairs two at a time.

When he bursts into the control room, he finds the large table in the middle smashed in half, the wood splintering from the force of something hitting it - _hard._ There are cables and wires strewn across the room from his mostly dismembered monitors. Steve’s papers he had worked so hard on were littering the floor.

“Hello?” He calls. There’s a startled squeak and the sound of a head hitting the bottom of the desk. Madison scrambles out from under the computers, a little banged up, but alive. Her hair is a mess and she’s got a bruise blossoming over her temple, but she’s okay. Tony can hardly believe it.

“Tony,” she yelps, eyes wide, and the next thing Tony knows, he’s got his arms full of her. She’s shaking.

Tony hasn’t really been in this position a lot before, this comforting, patriarchal position. But his instincts take over and he wraps his arms around her smaller frame, so, so glad that she’s safe.

“It’s okay, I’m here, you’re okay,” he breathes, not sure if he’s trying to calm her or himself.

“I was so - I was scared.” She admits in a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, because he doesn’t know what else he can say now.

“You’re okay, too,” she says, pulling back suddenly and looking him over with an intense gaze. “The bomb.”

“Yeah, well, close calls like that aren’t uncommon in the field.”

“You’re in idiot.” And suddenly she’s burrowed in his arms again. Again, Tony feels a rush of protection for her. He’s so lucky they didn’t hurt her, he can barely believe it. 

Actually, they didn’t hurt anyone. HYDRA probably didn’t even think anyone would be home, so what were they here for?

“What did they want anyways? Did they say?” He asks, finally pulling back. Madison frowns and points over at the disaster that was formerly the computer console.

“They went straight for those,” she informs him. “They were trying to get something out of  our system but… I’m not sure what.”

Tony walks over to desk, eyes roaming over the scattered parts and wires. “Did they get anything?” 

Now, Madison grins proudly. “Nope. Before they could, I wiped our entire system and put it all on here.” She fishes in her pocket for a second before pulling out a small USB drive. “Just like you taught me.”

Tony recalls it. Just a few days after they had arrived, Madison was chomping at the bit for some training. She didn’t know the other Avengers well enough to ask them yet, so she resigned herself to following Tony around all day every day, begging him to teach her things. He explained that he probably wasn’t the best person to train her, he fought in a giant metal suit, his fighting style wasn’t exactly applicable to a small girl. 

She pestered him endlessly anyways, so finally, just to shut her up, he taught her a few little tricks on the computer system. 

The next day, she started training with Natasha and didn’t ask him for much teaching anymore. But she still remembered.

Tony laughs and claps a hand on her shoulder. “Just like I taught you.” He repeats, smiling down at her.

Someone clears their throat in the doorway.

It’s Steve.

He’s watching them, something unreadable in his eyes, when suddenly his face goes hard. “Debriefing. Kitchen. Ten minutes,” he says, voice cold and emotionless. 

Tony is so fucked.

“He just cares,” Madison reassures him once Steve has left the room. She looks at him, head tipped to the side and eyes troubled. “I saw you die, you know,” she tells him. “I saw you stuck, not able to get out in time, and blown to bits and pieces. It’s a-“ she takes a deep breath and shudders. “It’s a cold world without you, Tony Stark. There’s still so much you have to do, so much you have to experience. You’re not done changing the world yet, okay? So quit pulling shit like that,” she demands, poking a finger in the center of his chest roughly.

“Yes ma’am.” Tony ignored the churning in his stomach, the idea of himself dying that day. “Anything else?”

Madison shakes her head, lips quirked into a mirthful grin. “I think that’s all I have to say. I’d feel bad being any harder on you with what you have coming from Steve after the debriefing.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Madison nods, grin still firmly in place. “He’s gonna tear you a new one.”

“Cant’t wait.”

 

_______________________________________________________

 

Tony fidgets throughout the entire debriefing. All he can think about is how badly he’s gonna get it from Steve when the meeting is over, and the sympathetic looks Madison keeps sending his way aren’t really helping the situation at all. He can barely focus on the conversation going on, but tries his damn hardest because foiling HYDRA’s plan and saving the world was a little more important than saving his own skin.

“I was more of a guinea pig than anything else,” Pietro addresses the room of Avengers, Wanda sat closely at his side. “They would ask for me to join with them, but they never really expected I would agree. In the end, they must have decided I made a better decoy to distract you all than a zombie soldier. I was just their practice for the main event.”

“The Red Skull.” Pietro nods at Steve. “Do you have any idea how what they did to you works?” Steve asks.

“Nanites. That is all I could really understand of it,” Pietro admits, and Tony can’t really blame him because this stuff isn’t even making sense to him, and he’s kind of a genius. “They have been injecting these nanites into HYDRA operatives and experiments, so that in the case that one of them dies, they are able to bring them back to life. Wanda most likely has them inside of her as well. It is their backup plan,” Pietro frowns. “Their failsafe.”

The cogs in Tony’s mind turn as he attempts to make heads and tails of the information Pietro gave them. “Nanotechnology,” he murmurs, drawing the attention of the room as he works out the problem. “Nanites, probably overriding the central nervous system, the major vital organs… If HYDRA was able to create nanites that could perfectly imitate the neurons necessary for the brain to function, hijack the central nervous system it -“ Tony pauses, brow furrowed. “It’s extremely difficult, highly unlikely, but it’s -“

“Not impossible,” James finishes for him, eyebrows raised with a pointed look at Pietro,

“Not impossible,” Tony repeats. “And even if it were, I wouldn’t rule it out. We’ve seen the impossible happen too many times before to be ignorant to it.” Tony holds back a shudder, blocks out certain memories. Instinctively, he looks over at Steve to distract himself from the dark places in his mind.

Steve’s head is ducked, sweaty, messy blonde hair falling over his eyes as he stares down at his fists resting on the table in front of him. He looks frustrated, defeated in a way that Tony hated to see him. He decided to try and cheer Steve up with his own report from the day.

“Well the good news is that whatever they came here for, they didn’t get their hands on.” He looks over at Madison who perks up and takes the USB drive out of her pocket and places it on the table in front of her.

“They weren’t here to attack us, they went straight for the computers.”

“They probably did not even know anyone would be here,” Pietro shrugs. “Probably thought that using me as bait would draw all of you away from your home. They most likely were not counting on you having any extra people.” Pietro frowns, looking around the room slowly, calculatingly across every person’s face. “You do have quite a few more extra people than before.”

“It’s called ‘upgrading’”, Clint offers without looking up from the tip of the arrow in his lap that he’s been polishing. Pietro smirks at him.

Steve still hasn’t looked up from the table.

“And in other good news, I blew up their base,” Tony offers. Steve’s head immediately snaps up, but the anger in his eyes wasn’t really what Tony was going for here.

“Almost killing yourself in the process,” Steve reprimands sharply. Tony notices everyone in the room cringe for him, probably just thanking their lucky stars that they weren’t the ones on the receiving end of Steve’s Angry Captain voice. 

“It was a necessary precaution!” Tony defends weakly.

“It was a reckless action driven by spite and fear.”

“Wow, please, don't sugarcoat it.”

“You can’t just go off the board like that, Tony!”

“Um, excuse me, but I destroyed all of their databases and physical files. Now they’ve lost everything they had on Speedy,” Tony gestures wildly towards Pietro. “They knew all of your strengths and weaknesses, what makes you tick. You would’ve just been a liability on the field and now I’ve liberated you from their grasps. You’re welcome, Pietro!”

“Um, thank you?”

“Tony!” Steve barks, suddenly standing, looming over the table towards Tony in this super confusing way that leaves Tony’s heart beating really quickly for about a hundred different reasons. He settles on fear, ignoring the pulses of heat tugging at his gut. The room is so quiet, Tony’s afraid everyone can hear the pounding in his chest. 

Finally, Natasha breaks the silence. “Debriefing over?” she suggests gently, putting a hand on Steve’s arm. Tony ignores the new heat in his gut at the action. Steve’s posture relaxes, but his eyes stay hard, trained on Tony.

“Debriefing over,” he confirms. “Everyone get some rest, it’s been a long day — _Don’t even think about it._ ” He snaps when he sees Tony quickly beginning to gather his things, intent on slipping out with the rest of the team. No such luck, Steve’s got eyes like a hawk. Tony sighs heavily and drops back into his seat as the rest of the room empties out, a few sympathetic looks being tossed his way as they abandon him to the fire. Those traitors.

Steve sits across the table from Tony, eyes narrows and mouth set in a hard line. Tony has horrifying flashbacks of being in this exact situation before, but with Howard sitting across from him. Disappointed in him. Just like Steve is disappointed in him.

Steve takes a deep breath and Tony prepares for the lecture, the speech, the litany of things wrong with Tony, the list of things he didn’t do right. 

But Steve doesn’t say any of that. Instead he says, “Are you okay?”

Tony freezes, searching Steve’s face for a sign that this is some kind of trick, a lure into a false sense of security before he tears Tony apart. Tony finds none of that, so in a moment of shocking honesty he says, “I am now.”

Steve nods like he understands, and Tony thinks maybe he could - maybe he does. 

“We talked about this, Tony. I thought we agreed no more gambling with your life? You were doing so well, what happened?” 

Tony thinks back on it. He thinks about the hours of conversation Steve forced him into on the very topic of Tony’s life. He can’t name a single one that he enjoyed, but he also can’t say they didn’t help. And he can pinpoint exactly when everything went wrong.

“Moment of weakness,” he says instead. “Won’t happen again.” Steve just frowns at him, pinning Tony in place with wide, blue eyes.

“That’s not it,” he tells Tony quietly, as if he can read Tony’s mind and knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“Sure it is,” Tony defends, oozing fake confidence that he’s been trademarking since he was seven years old. “I heard Madison scream and I got angry, it was just a highly emotional reaction to -“

“Scared,” Steve butts in. Tony flounders for a second.

“Uh, what?” He eloquently asks.

“You weren’t angry, you were scared,” Steve corrects him. “You were scared because you thought that if something happened to Madison it would be your fault.”

“Wasn’t scared…” Tony grumbles, turning away from Steve petulantly. 

“Wasn’t thinking,” Steve corrects him again, this time with a teasing tone to his voice. Tony looks up slowly and finds Steve looking back at him with an equally fond and worried expression. “You can’t lie to me Tony, it wasn’t just this one moment. Something happened, I know it. Don’t think I missed the fact that you almost got yourself killed trying to save Rhodey in Germany, too.” Tony looks down guiltily.

“We talked about this,” Steve repeats, more quietly this time. “We discussed how you need to find something to hold onto in those moments, find something to anchor you and make you think more clearly. We talked about you finding a reason to be more careful with your life and stay alive.” 

Tony thinks his heart stops beating. 

“And I know it’s been hard because you haven’t been able to see Pepper a lot lately, but you need to still think about how devastated she would be if anything happened to you,” Steve continues.

Wait, what?

“Pepper?” Tony blurts out, cutting off whatever else Steve had been saying, none of which he had heard.

“Uh, yes?” Steve cocks his head to the side. “Pepper? I mean isn’t she, I mean I know we’ve been keeping you away from her, but I think she would still want you alive…?”

“Oh, right. Pepper.” Tony plasters on a smile. “Yeah, you know, it has been hard not seeing her a lot lately. Considering how I’ve been so busy with the team, and my new designs, and saving the world, and how she’s been so busy in Thailand schmoozing investors and catering to customers, and, you know, being broken up with me.”

Tony lets that one settle for a moment, watches the shifting expressions on Steve’s face.

“I’m - sorry, Tony, I didn’t know, I thought… When?”

“About a year ago.”

“A year - wait, what? How is that…” Steve shakes his head, trying to make sense of what Tony’s just told him. Steve is a smart boy, Tony knows he’ll figure it out eventually. He tries not to throw up at the thought. “A year ago was Ultron, but it was weeks after that when we started talking about this, about finding something. All this time I thought it was Pepper… But it was something else?”

“It was something else.” Tony confirms.

“Well, what happened?”

“I lost it.” Steve raises his eyebrows. “Well, not, I didn’t _lose_ it, I know where it is… I just kind of… Ruined it.”

The next few moments are some of the most terrifying in Tony’s life. Steve is confused at first, quiet and thoughtful. Then, finally, something seems to click. His eyes widen and his lips part just slightly and Tony braces himself for Steve’s next words.

“It was me.” Tony shrugs in response, but Steve is still looking at him with this face of wonder and shock and Tony knows he’s expecting more of an explanation, knows he deserves one, too. But he can’t quite figure out how to tell Steve, _Of course it was you, it had to be you, I kept myself alive because if I died, I would miss you, I couldn’t bear to disappoint you, I couldn’t stand the thought of tumbling into eternity without you but then I went and messed everything up and now I think my death would be the best thing for you, after all._

…or some melodramatic bullshit like that. 

So instead he says, “I figured you’d be pretty broken up about it if I went and died after you spent so much energy trying to keep me alive. So, yeah, there’s that,” he shrugs again like it’s no big deal, because it is totally not a big deal to tell your best friend that he’s basically the your entire reason for existing. It’s totally not a big deal so Tony would really appreciate if Steve’s eyes would stop shining in that distracting, sparkling way of his. Because really, it’s no big deal.

Except Tony knows and Steve knows that it’s everything.

“You didn’t-“ Steve pauses to clear his throat. “You didn’t ruin anything. I would still very much like you to stay alive.”

“Well, alright then.” Tony agrees easily. Steve just keeps looking at him, eyes shining and grin blinding.

“Alright then,” he parrots, looking way too pleased for Tony’s comfort, and fuck was he blushing now? If Steve’s smirk was anything to go off of, he was definitely blushing now. 

“Okay, good talk, Cap. I think I’m gonna go ahead and turn in for the night,” Tony tears himself away from Steve’s magnetic presence and forces himself to leave the room. When he gets to the door, Steve calls out his name and Tony stops.

“Thank you,” Steve says, and Tony gives a quick nod in return before he fucking bolts from the room, breathing ragged and head pounding because _that_ was not something Tony was really prepared for. For Steve to _thank_ him, as if Tony choosing Steve as his reason to live was like bestowing some kind of magnificent gift on the man. As if Tony needing him made him _lucky_ or something like that.

Steve had no reason to be thanking Tony, and yet he did it with such ease. Tony had about a hundred things he should be thanking Steve for, and he couldn’t bring himself to even whisper it into a phone receiver late at night, no matter how many times he wanted to.

Steve, for some ungodly reason, cared about Tony. He liked Tony so much, that he gladly took sole responsibility for Tony’s wellbeing. Steve liked being around Tony. Steve took care of Tony. Tony didn’t deserve Steve in any capacity, not in the slightest, but that little fact didn’t seem to bother Steve whatsoever. Maybe it was about time Tony stopped letting it bother him?

Things start changing after that.


End file.
